Week 5
Day 1
Love: Keep Calm
Love is not provoked (NASB), is not
easily angered (NIV), is not irritable (ESV).
The Greek word
translated here as not easily angered has
carried over into modern English. The word
is paroxyno and the noun form, paroxysmos, has been morphed into the
English word paroxysm. A paroxysm is a “sudden and uncontrollable
expression of emotion.” A visit to a
thesaurus lists the synonyms for paroxysm as “spasm, fit, burst, outburst,
explosion, eruption.”
We could phrase it in any of the
following ways: Love is not spastic.
Love does not throw fits. Love
avoids outbursts. Love doesn’t erupt. Love is not touchy. That’s why we’ve titled this week’s emphasis,
Love: keep calm.
Concerning the indispensible
importance of this quality of love, Scottish evangelist Henry Drummond offers
very helpful commentary in his classic message “The Greatest Thing In the
World.”
No form of vice, not worldliness, not
greed of gold, not drunkenness itself, does more to un-Christianise society
than evil temper. For embittering life,
for breaking up communities, for destroying the most sacred relationships, for
devastating homes, for withering up men and women, for taking the bloom off
childhood, in short, for sheer gratuitous misery-producing power, this
influence stands alone.
Wow!
Drummond certainly makes very valid points concerning the destructive
nature of unloving “eruptions.” If you
have been walking through these daily devotionals with us for a while, you may
already be thinking that this will make for a very painful reflective question
at the end of this devotional.
Indeed. J
Last week we looked at the previous
phrase, “love is not self-seeking.” This
is an important key to living out this week’s emphasis. One reason we can be easily angered,
irritable, erupt, etc., is that we are absorbed in ourselves, our own
interests, our own goals, reputation, etc.
When somebody else interferes with our self-seeking goals or interests,
we “erupt.” Author Neil Anderson writes
that anger signals a blocked goal. He
tells the following story.
Feelings of anger should prompt us to
reexamine what we believe and the mental goals we have formulated to accomplish
these beliefs. My daughter Heidi helped
me with this process one Sunday morning while I was trying to hustle my family
out the door for church. I had been
waiting in the car for several minutes before I stomped back into the house and
shouted angrily, “We should have left for church 15 minutes ago!”
All was silent for a moment, then
Heidi’s soft voice floated around the corner from her bedroom: “What’s the
matter, dad, did somebody block your goal?”
That’s the question you need to hear when you start to steam because
something isn’t going the way you planned. [1]
Let’s pick up
tomorrow with looking beneath the surface at what causes our outbursts, which
contradict the growth of God’s Higher Love in our lives. When love is set free in us it empowers us to
“keep calm.”
Questions for Reflection
Here is the
painful question: Where have you
suffered from the painful results of unloving eruptions? First, consider when you have been on the
receiving end of somebody’s anger. How
has this left a negative impact on your life?
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Now consider how
you have reacted angrily and left a negative carbon footprint in somebody
else’s life?
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Part Three of
painful question: Where do you still
struggle with this issue, whether on the receiving or giving end? How is this impacting your key relationships?
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How did Neil
Anderson’s real-life example help describe the process of allowing love to
check our reactions and keep calm?
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Which of your
“blocked goals” are most likely to provoke an angry outburst on those around
you? Why is this?
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