Really?!

The other day, the little rubber nose-pad thingy on my glasses fell off. I hadn’t taken a blow to the face; there was nothing that prompted it. I just went to adjust my glasses, as I do hundreds of times a day, and I felt something small fall down my face. I’ve worn glasses since the second grade, and this has never happened before. To keep it classy I will just say that I was perturbed!

Something like this, while annoying, isn’t usually an event to get worked up about. But it happened during a run of days that just weren’t going too great for me, and I was about ready to pop off. Thankfully, no one was around because I’m sure we’ve all had those occasions to place our anger about one thing on to someone who has nothing to do with it. I don’t want to be that person.

We all have those things that can send us down a path of anger, and we can tend to leave a wake of destruction as we travel down it. This is the time when we must practice self-control. Proverbs 16:32 says, “Whoever is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and they who rule their spirit than they who take a city.”

Being slow to anger almost seems like a superpower when you’re in a bad mood. It can be difficult (and feel impossible) when there are so many things in this world that seem like they are designed to perturb us. We live in a world where “ragebait” is a word, this is a piece of content that gets engagement by intentionally making people frustrated. Someone sees it and shares it saying, “can you believe how dumb this is?” or “How can they say something like this?” 

Thankfully, you get to choose what is most important to you. You don’t need to engage with everything that bothers you. Some things will happen. We don’t control the world around us as much as we wish we could. When things happen, and they are definitely going to happen, we just need to do our best to remember the bigger picture.

Being slow to anger makes you strong enough to rule a city!