Lenten Devotional

WEEK 4: ANGER

SCRIPTURE

Read Psalm 137

1 By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. 2 On the willows there we hung up our lyres. 3 For there our captors required of us songs, and our tormentors, mirth, saying, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!" 4 How shall we sing the LORD's song in a foreign land? 5 If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its skill! 6 Let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy! 7 Remember, O LORD, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem, how they said, "Lay it bare, lay it bare, down to its foundations!" 8 O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed, blessed shall he be who repays you with what you have done to us! 9 Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!

This is a psalm of a dislocated, disgraced, and frustrated people being carried away to slavery while their homeland gets destroyed. Everything they hoped for, believed in, and enjoyed has been tainted or destroyed completely.

Q: How can you resonate with their anger? Why?

Q: How do you respond to a loss of control or helplessness?

Q: How does God disarm or deal with this sort of anger in Christ?

PRAYER

Pray that your anger would lead you to an acceptance of your helplessness before powers that you can’t control, drawing you into the arms of God.

Pray for gentleness among your family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers who would disarm anger and give opportunity to point toward Christ as the just and merciful judge.

Thank Christ for both absorbing our unrighteous anger on the cross and executing His just anger against unrepentant evil in the end.