Volcanoes All Around

Wednesday, March 12, 2014

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Violence in a movie theater? That's not news. I mean, there's a lot of it on the screen. But, this time, there was violence in the seats of a Florida theatre. A man actually killed a man in front of him. Shot him! Apparently because the victim was texting during the previews. Turns out he was texting daycare to check on his three-year-old daughter.

It's a disturbing reminder of a troubling reality of our time. We're surrounded by angry people who are one provocation away from an explosion. I mean, you can tell by how they're enraged about seemingly small things. You know they already had to have a very full glass for a single drop to make them spill all over everybody. Our easily-triggered and quickly-provoked anger should scare us. Because rage crushes reason and makes us blind to the expensive of consequences of our eruption.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about "Volcanoes All Around."

When I was in Quito, Ecuador, I was surprised to learn that the city is virtually ringed by volcanic mountains. Dormant, I hoped. The locals pointed out one in particular-Antisana. "It's 18,000 feet," they said, and I was impressed. "They believe it used to be 28,000 feet." I was curious. Turns out that it just blew its top one day. The eruption didn't really last all that long, but the damage was forever. What was lost was lost for good.

Anger's like that. Just ask the spouses, the children who bear the permanent scars from a human volcano near them. Or the countless people who are forever diminished by the angry words, names, and accusations heaped on them. Probably by someone who supposedly loves them.

The "molten lava" of rage often comes from a lot of junk we stuffed inside: wounds, disappointments and perceived injustices. I've found you have just two choices with life's bad stuff. You can let it go or you'll let it grow. Bitterness, grudges, unforgiveness; they don't stay the same size. They morph from deal-withable grassfires into uncontrollable infernos unless you deal with them when they're small.

I found this simple defusing technique in the ancient wisdom of the world's best-selling book. It says, "Do not let the sun go down while you're angry." In other words, deal with it while it's small - manageable. Talk it through. Forgive, if necessary. Get some distance. Just don't stuff it.

Our hair-trigger temper should scare us enough to seek out a place to dump the build-up of years. Someone we can pour it all out to. Someone who can help us work through it. Even to trace our rage back to those original wounds we never dealt with; wounds that became the foundation for what is now a volcanic backlog of angry "sundowns." Unconfronted anger is a ticking time bomb. It's sure to explode, carrying us to consequences we could never imagine. If we're honest, we've all got a dark side. Some of us are better at concealing it than others, but it's still a defining part of who we are.

One teenage guy summed it up pretty well when he told me, "Ron, there's a darkness inside me that scares me." Me, too. Rage, passion, greed, self-destruction, selfishness: they're all symptoms, the Bible explains, of a much deeper cancer. Our rebellion against God. Hijackers; that's what we are. While we were "created by Him and for Him," the Bible says. It also says, "Each of us has turned to His own way" (Colossians 1:16; Isaiah 53:6).

We've left the Sun we were made for and drifted into ever-darker corners of ourselves. In our word for today from the Word of God, Romans chapter 7 beginning in verse 24, one Bible writer describes himself as a "prisoner of sin," and he cried out, "Who will rescue me?" Then the answer. "Thank God! Jesus Christ our Lord!"

The Bible reveals that Jesus turned the full wrath of the beast of sin on Himself when He absorbed all our darkness, all the hell, dying on the cross. He has beaten the monster that has always beaten me. The darkness doesn't have to win any more.

There is a Liberator, a Savior. A Savior I want you to know as I've come to know Him. I ask you to join me at our website and find there the road to begin a relationship with Him that is so transforming. Go to ANewStory.com. I hope you'll check it out today, and let this be your new beginning.