Be Still And Know

Proverbs 29:11 I love the down-to-earth realism of the Bible. It meets us where we are and engages in the sharp reality of our lives. Here the writer seems to assume that we all get angry from time to time - that’s probably a very wise assumption. No doubt we all have very different anger thresholds. Some people very rarely get angry, and others can get steamed up about the most minor issues. Wherever you are on the scale, we all need to know what to do with our anger. The writer of Proverbs, in his typically blunt way, declares that fools let it all out, and wise people quietly hold it back. Valuable and wise as the book of Proverbs is, his short, pithy sayings need unpacking. It would, for example, be a mistake to lump all anger together. Some anger is good. We often hear about God’s anger. In his holiness, he gets incredibly angry about sin. Isaiah wrote of the day when God would reveal his “fury and fierce anger” (Isaiah 13:9). Jesus expressed anger at the way in which the temple was being overrun by