-->

March 4, 2010

God-centered anger is marked by grief.

Tonight Matt and I went on a mini-date to a banquet/fundraiser for the crisis pregnancy center where I volunteer, but this is not where my story begins.

Yesterday, after getting out of the shower, I twisted my hair in 1/2 in sections and let it air dry like that. The pieces untwisted most of the way, but it still tamed the frizz and left a soft wave in my hair that my husband said he liked. So today I attempted to take this one step further. I took a late shower since I am still a stay-at-home and can, and this time I twisted the pieces much smaller. If you take a small piece of hair, twist it tight, and fold it in half... it twists up again and stays in place! Amazing! So I spent 40 minutes (watching Ellen and) twisting my hair. I wish I had taken a picture of this silly creation, but I was so excited about the wave it would give me in the end. At about 5:15, 1 hour before I had to walk out of the house) I took down my pretty little twisties. Oh meee gosh... my hair was 3 times it's usual thickness and it looked like I had taken a crimper to it. Ooops! That's not cute! I didn't have time to get that mess wet enough that the crimp would blow dry out so I tried putting it in a pony tail. That really looked like the tail of a pony. What a mess. In a moment of panic I decided to put the ponytail high on the crown of my head and wrap it loosely around itself giving me a messy/modern bun, this was my hope at least. I think it worked, for the most part. The only problem was now I was going to a "business casual" banquet with a ballerina hair-do. Oh well, I threw on my outfit, held my head high, and tried to rock it with confidence. Matt let me know that he liked it, but that he liked my "regular hair" better. Like he was worried this might replace my "regular hair" 350 days out of the year. Haha. Thanks. You don't have to worry about me wearing my hair in a high bun too often.

So the banquet! It was really nice. The speaker was Tullian Tchividjian, and he talked about "righteous anger." God-centered anger as opposed to self-centered anger. He showed that we are commanded in Ephesians 4:26 "Be angry and do not sin..." It doesn't say if you happen to be angry, be sure you do not sin. As christians, we should be angry at the sin in the world. He then used Mark 3:5 to show what God's anger looks like: "And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart..." Anger that is marked by grief, because it comes with an understanding that people are created for so much more than the sin that fills their lives. My favorite point that Tullian made was that, to the average un-churched person on the street, christians are known for their anger. They are not typically known for their grief however. He discussed different ways to tell if your anger is self-centered or God centered, and how we should be equally (or more) mad at our own sin than the sin in others. This makes perfect sense. The final point he made was that it's the grief we show in regards to the sin in others that brings glory to God, not the anger. It is because of the anger felt towards the particular sin of sex before marriage and the grief felt for all the people affected by that particular sin that inspires organizations like the crisis pregnancy center in Durham. I wasn't expecting a convicting message tonight, and I definitely wasn't expecting to hear something I hadn't kind of heard before, but I got both and I'm very thankful.

No comments :

Post a Comment