Store

Our Sunday School lesson today was called "Store." All through the movie it kept showing all the things that can happen at the store to make you angry... the buggy with the bad wheel, the product you want is all gone or you can't find it, kids that don't behave, bags that break, people with too many items in the wrong lane. We've all experienced them. But Rob Bell had some great points to make about the things that make us angry and why they anger us.

The first thing that really struck me was his identification of the root cause of most of our anger. It happens when something blocks our will and we don't get what we want. We want to go 60 and the car in front of us is going 45. We want speedy service at the restaurant, and we have to wait longer than we think we should. I could go on and on. So the root of anger is really selfishness, wanting what we want when we want it.

Rob went on to say that we get angry about these things as if they really matter. Isn't that so true? How many of the things that make us mad are totally meaningless? And how often do we behave badly to someone else about these meaningless things?

Next, Rob went on to say that we get angry about so many things that don't matter, and then we fail to get angry about the things that do matter. This is Jesus' example to us. He got mad about things that were important. He raged at the merchants who defiled the Temple. He challenged the Pharisees and their hypocrisy, especially when it came to His healing on the Sabbath. He was passionately enraged when the poor and the oppressed were dealt with unjustly. These are the things we need to be angry about. And then we need to channel that anger into making a difference in the world.

Finally, Rob challenged us to think of a time when we said, "This (whatever this is for you) is not right. Someone should do something about this." If you feel this way in some area, maybe it is God telling you, "You are the one who should do something about this."