Day 285 – Justifiable Resentment
Scripture focus: He said to his disciples, "Hard trials and temptations are bound to come, but too bad for whoever brings them on! Better to wear a millstone necklace and take a swim in the deep blue sea than give even one of these dear little ones a hard time!" Luke 17:1-2 The Message
When really bad stuff happens to you…
1. Do you make frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment?
2. Do you have a pattern of unstable and intense relationships?
3. Do you have an unstable sense of self and identity?
4. Are you impulsive in ways that are self-damaging (drug use, excessive spending, reckless driving, unsafe sex)?
5. Do you have recurrent suicidal actions, threats, thoughts, or self-injury behaviors?
6. Are you intensely moody, or have emotions that, when triggered, last hours or days?
7. Do you suffer from chronic feelings of emptiness, boredom or loneliness?
8. Do you have trouble controlling intense or inappropriate anger?
9. Do you experience temporary, stress-triggered paranoid ideas or dissociative symptoms (feeling threatened by others or feel unreal)? Paraphrased from The Angry Heart, by Joseph Santoro, PH.D.
Seventy to seventy-nine percent of the people who suffer serious abuse or psychological trauma and twenty five of people who don’t may be biologically vulnerable to developing at least five of the nine symptoms listed above. When people do bad things to us – bad things happen. We develop hurts, habits and hang-ups as a result of others’ harming ways. As we become aware of the consequences that past bad acts are causing us – of course we’re going to feel resentment! It’s normal. But as we say at NorthStar Community – if we’re going to live the abundant life – we’re going to have to learn how to stretch beyond normal, and grab hold of God’s power to restore.
Look at today’s scripture focus. When God calls us to forgive, he’s not saying that past hurts don’t matter, or that justice will not prevail. In fact, Jesus says, "Better to wear a millstone necklace and take a swim in the deep blue sea than give even one of these dear little ones a hard time!" (This sounds an awful like a scene out of "The Godfather"!)
But here’s the deal – the dispensing of justice is in God’s hand, not ours.
Only God can appropriately handle the dispensing of mercy and justice.
I know that bad stuff may have happened to you – but staying resentful is not the pathway to peace. The life of Randy Pausch has reminded me that there are ways to think about, respond to and embrace life AND suffering that enables us to take our lemony lives – and end up with refreshing lemonade. True, we can carry around our basket of lemons and cry out for more faith.
That’s a choice we have. But Pausch has a different lesson for us – and I think his example is worth following.
Lesson six: Trials will come – learn how to make lemonade.
Recommended reading: Jeremiah 19 and 20 in the morning; Jeremiah 21 and Psalm 48 in the evening
No comments:
Post a Comment