“I want men everywhere to lift up holy hands in prayer, without anger or disputing.” – 1 Timothy 2:8
One Halloween evening, when he was about ten, Dwight Eisenhower’s older brothers received permission to go out trick-or-treating, a more adventurous activity in those days than it is now. Dwight wanted to go with them, but his parents told him he was too young. He pleaded with them, watched his brothers go, and then became engulfed by uncontrolled rage. He turned red. His hair bristled. Weeping and screaming, he rushed out into the front yard and began pounding his fists against the trunk of an apple tree, scraping the skin off and leaving his hands bloody and torn.
His father shook him, lashed him with a hickory switch, and sent him up to bed. About an hour later, with Dwight sobbing into his pillow, his mother came up and sat silently rocking in the chair next to his bed. Eventually, she quoted a verse from the Bible: “He that conquereth his own soul is greater than he who taketh a city.” As she began to salve and bandage his wounds, she told her son to beware of the anger and hatred burning inside. Hatred is a futile thing, she told him, which only injures the person who harbors it. Of all her boys, she told him, he had the most to learn about controlling his passions. When he was seventy-six, President Eisenhower wrote, “I have always looked back on that conversation as one of the most valuable moments of my life.
Everyone wrestles with the sin of anger. Today in prayer, give any anger you have to Jesus. Then worship the Lord and accept His peace.
"People who fly into a rage always make a bad landing." - Will Rogers
God’s Word: “A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps himself under control.” – Proverbs 29:11
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