“Take a breath and count to ten.”  We’ve all said it at one time or another.  It sometimes works with children, but what about  adults?  How do we control our anger when faced with so much of it every day?  Anger usually comes from frustration, inability to communicate what we feel and a lack of compassion for one another.

We all need to take a moment to compose ourselves, before we speak or do something we will eventually regret.  But how do we do that when everyone else is so angry?  It might work to count to ten, but anger often rears its ugly head at about five.

We, the adults, are supposed to be setting the example for future generations.  Are we doing that?  Take a look at our current division in the political arena.  Take a look at most television shows, pitting one against another.  Observe the bullying going on in the workplace.  Watch the daily news filled with road rage, murder, assault, etc.

Why can’t we live in harmony?  Where’s the compassion for one another? Why does everything have to be a competition to see who’s the best?

Take a breath.

Count to ten.

Take another breath.

Keep your mouth shut for a while.

Count to a hundred if necessary,

or a thousand.

We all need to look for some balance.  We as human beings are going to get angry.  It’s part of our sinful nature.  However, if we look at the perfect example for what human behavior should look like, all we need do is turn to Jesus, the Son of God.  In His humanity, he displayed anger.  His anger was righteous however, since His house of worship was being infested by money changers and thieves. Corruption seems to show its ugliness even in the supposedly purest of places.

Still, Jesus the man also is God.  He inherited His Father’s righteous indignation, but He also was merciful.  Mercy seems to be a word that isn’t used much today, except in a court of law.  Mercy is akin to compassion, grace, leniency, kindness or sympathy.  Those terms have given way to cold heartedness, mercilessness, inhumanity, retribution and revenge.  We’ve been exposed to a lot of those terms lately.

What if Jesus showed no mercy to His accusers and simply zapped them straight to hell?  What if He never went to the cross and took on the burden of our sin so that we wouldn’t have to?  What if He was never born?  Think of the state our world would be in today, had He not taken on human form and died for us.

Have we become so engrained with anger that our opinion is the only one that counts?  Are we so bold as to think, we’re better than others?  Are we willing to listen, to communicate, to work together to solve problems, or are we looking only to make others look bad?  The world will always be ugly.  Sin still exists, but we have been bought and paid for by the blood of our Savior. We should start reflecting His personality.

Take a breath.

He took His last breath,

So that we could breathe forever.