ANGRY YOUNG MAN or “MOSES AND THE REVOLUTION”

Blogging from Exodus 2:11+

Now it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out to his brethren and looked at their burdens. And he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his brethren. So he looked this way and that way, and when he saw no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.(Exodus 2:11, 12)

Moses was angry.  It was a seething, simmering, suppressed rage lidded by a schooled smile, a flawless WASP accent, and the impeccable manners acquired in an Ivy League lifestyle; but Moses  had been angry for the better part of 40 years. 

If any of his high-class Egyptians peers had noticed, one of the elders would surely have accused Moses of being “ungrateful.”  After all, he’d enjoyed privilege, education, and opportunities other boys like him could only dream of.

But Moses knew too much to just “shut up and play” the game of Egyptian assimilation.  

Moses KNEW that the man he called grandfather had tried to kill him when he was a baby.  Moses KNEW that the same folks who caled him “sir,” and “your highness” would have cheerfully drowned him in the Nile without hesitation and without consequence.

In 4 decades in Pharaoh’s house, how many racist, anti-Semitic jokes do you think Moses forced himself to laugh at?  How many times did he sit through impassioned speeches about how it was acceptable for Egyptians to murder young Hebrew boys because “Look at all the Hebrew-on-Hebrew crime”?

How many family dinner guests casually quipped about wasting education on Hebrews because “All they really need is to job skills so they can make bricks faster”?

  

In 40 years, how many adopted siblings, cousins, uncles, and aunts repeated the common line,  “All those Hebrews do is live off the government in Goshen and have babies and take Egyptian jobs” and then when they noticed Moses’ awkward silence added, “but not you, Moses.  Oh no, your highness.  You’re not like THEM.  I don’t even see color when I look at you, your Highness.  You’re like a ‘real’ Egyptian.” 

Someone probably even tried to explain to Moses that the Hebrews LIKED being slaves.  “They’ve been in Egypt 400 years,” they said, “That sounds like a choice.”

For 40 years Moses heard and KNEW:  “They’re talking about my people.  They’re talking about my brother, my sister, my mama.  They’re talking about ME.”  

Yeah, Moses was angry.  But, he didn’t kill the Egyptian overseer because he was angry.  Not ONLY because he was angry.   Moses killed the Egyptian because he was angry and AMBITIOUS.

Moses supposed that his  Hebrew brethren would have understood that God would deliver them by his hand . . . (Acts 7:25).

that God would deliver them by his hand

Moses didn’t just want to kill an overseer; he wanted to Nat Turner the whole system.  Moses was trying to start a revolution.

That’s why Pharaoh ordered Moses killed.   He didn’t care about another spoiled prince’s liberal rage, and he didn’t care about a dead overseer.  The Egyptian royal family were worshipped as the descendants of the gods.   A prince of Egypt could have killed or ordered the death of a hundred lowly Egyptian overseers for any reason or for none at all.    No prince would be arrested for murder but one would have been arrested and executed for treason.

So why didn’t God support Moses when he first tried to deliver the Hebrew children from their oppressors? 

Remember what the Hebrew men asked Moses the day after the murder? 

And when he went out the second day, behold, two Hebrew men were fighting, and he said to the one who did the wrong, “Why are you striking your companion?”

Then he said, “Who made you a prince and a judge over us? . . . ”  (Exodus 2:13,14)

Who made you a prince and a judge over us? 

They knew that Moses wasn’t just angry; he was angry and ambitious.  Moses didn’t just want to be a liberator.  Moses wanted to be king. 

But the only kind of king Moses knew to be was a king like Pharaoh.

God didn’t want another pharaoh. 

So instead of endorsing Moses’ revolution by striking down the Egyptians in a string of deadly miracles, the Lord let Moses catch a case.  He  fled into the wilderness of Midian where he met a man named Reuel, aka Jethro.

Reuel (Exodus 2:16) became Moses’ father-in-law and mentor.  For the first time in his life, Moses sat under an actively engaged father figure.  He learned to be a husband and father.  He learned to know and love the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  In Egypt Moses spent 40 years learning  to lead like a pharaoh.  In Midian, it took just as long for him to learn to serve like a shepherd (Acts 7:23; Exodus 7:7).

When God spoke to him out of a burning bush Moses had changed so much that he tried to decline the offer of leadership.

God didn’t support the revolutionary who wanted to be a king.  God called the prophet who wanted to be a shepherd. 

Maybe this is why OUR attempts at revolutionary reform in and through the church fail:  because we fail to get beyond our anger and our ambitions.  We need to add a whole new mindset to our highly educated skillset.   

The Lord is looking for leaders who have not made their ascent to power a condition of their people's deliverance.  God is waiting on us to think less like revolutionaries and more like shepherds.

--Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama. He writes a blog called A Word to the Wise at www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves 

Click here to support this ministry with a donation.  Or go to andersontgraves.blogspot.com and click on the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

I CAN'T BREATHE

Job hadn’t done anything to deserve this.  His friends insisted that he must have violated the law in some way, he must have done something suspicious---- why else would he have been thrown down and put into this position?

But God knows Job didn’t deserve this.  Literally, God knew.

Then the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil?” (Job 1:8)

Job didn’t deserve this; and in chapter 9 when he searched for the words to describe the wretchedness of the injustice he was experiencing, Job found these:

He crushes me with a tempest,

And multiplies my wounds without cause.

He will not allow me to catch my breath,

But fills me with bitterness.

If it is a matter of strength, indeed he is strong;

And if of justice, who will appoint my day in court?

Though I were righteous, my own mouth would condemn me;

Though I were blameless, it would pronounce me guilty.   

Job experienced his suffering as an act of divine brutality.  He felt like God had assaulted him without cause.  He felt like God had jumped on top of him with  the immovable weight of supreme legal authority.  Like God had  wrapped his strong arms around him in malice and  he will not allow me to catch my breath. 

Job cried out:

“I can’t breathe.”

We have the whole story in Scripture, so we know that God was working out a long term strategy with Job. We know that God was addressing Job’s slow drift into self-worship.  We know that God had a plan to return all that Job had lost and make his end greater than his beginning.    WE know all of this.  But at the time, all Job knew was:

I can’t breathe.

On July 17, 2014, Eric Garner, a tall, strongly built African-American husband and father was standing on a sidewalk in Staten Island, New York.  The police confronted him about supposedly selling loose, single cigarettes.  He insisted he was innocent.  They insisted he had done something wrong.   Eric put his hands up.  He backed away.  He didn’t yell.  He didn’t curse.  He called the officers, “Sir.”  He called the officers “brother.”

They threw him down.  They jumped on top of him. One of them wrapped his strong arms around Eric’s throat and used his legal authority to illegally apply a chokehold.  And all Eric could say was:

“I can’t breathe.”

But he was not allowed to catch his breath. 

Eric died.

The officer who killed him will not answer to Eric, or to his widow, or to his children, or to the courts for what happened. 

So right now, there’s a weight on my heart.

Right now, I don’t understand.

I feel like any minute the one or ones who are supposed to protect me from the enemy may beat a hole through my hedge of professionalism and respectability and put their weight on me.  And if I raise up in my full strength and throw them off, I’ll only provoke more lethal thorns against my flesh.

What can I do?

I am sad

And angry

So angry

You can’t be this angry all the time.  You gotta work and talk to your children and give attention to your wife.  You’ve got friends and social obligations.

But why IS that officer still looking at me? 

What exactly does that Facebook comment mean?

I gotta get it together.

I can’t ….

I can’t…

He crushes me with a tempest,

And multiplies my wounds without cause.

He will not allow me to catch my breath

Oh!  My God!

I can’t breathe.

And then I do.

I close my eyes and breathe a prayer.  A litany of groans too deep for words.

And somehow, I know.

I know that my Redeemer lives,

And He shall stand at last on the earth;

And after my skin is destroyed, this I know,

That in my flesh I shall see God,  (Job 19: 25-26)

Job trusted God for justice. So do I.

I’m still hurt, still angry. But I can breathe.

Breathe with me

...

Amen.

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

PERMANENT WEED KILLER

Where I grew up in Bassfield, Mississippi we had a big yard. And I mowed that yard----- with a push mower.

Oh from time to time Pops would buy a so-called self-propelled mower to “help me out,” but when the propulsion gears got clogged with rich south Mississippi dirt (And the propulsion gears always got clogged.  Where’d they test self-propelled mowers anyway, in a parking lot?).  Anyway, when the self-propelled mowers stopped propelling themselves they became much heavier push mowers. 

I pushed that entire yard spring, summer, and fall.  If I didn’t get up early when it was cool, Pops would say, “I bought you a hat didn’t I?” and I’d mow that whole freakin’ yard in the Mississippi sun.  For some reason my parents didn’t discover  riding mowers until I moved out of state for college.

I hated yardwork.  Still do.

But back then on a Saturday under 100 degree plus sun while my friends drove by blowing their horns and waving, I hated the grass in that yard with the kind of seething, personal antipathy that teenagers usually reserve for other teenagers.

So one day, when Pops left me alone at noon with instructions to mow the yard because I should have gotten my butt up while it was still cool----- I sprayed the entire yard with diluted diesel, and then I sat on the steps of our trailer and watched the grass die.

It was BEAUTIFUL.  The blades of grass shrunk and curled in the sun.  The tall seeded stems drooped and seemed to slide back in to the earth.  It all turned this beautiful winter brown, first in spots were the droplets of diesel fell, but after an hour baking in the oven that was Mississippi the diesel basting turned the entire yard an even shade of beautiful, beautiful, dead, not needing to be mowed brown.

I started this story to make some deep point.  Where was I going with this?

Oh, yeah. 

The grass grew back.  The mowing started all over again.

Around this time,  in Sunday school, we were studying the Judges (as in the book of Judges), and I read Judges 9: 45.

And Abimelech fought against the city all that day; and he took the city, and slew the people that was therein, and beat down the city, and sowed it with salt (KJV)

Our Sunday school teacher explained that salt kills the root and the makes it impossible for anything to ever grow on that soil again.

I put my fingertips together, leaned back in the pew, and said nothing, but in my mind I was laughing, “Bwaahahahaha!”

No.  I didn’t spread salt on my parents’ yard.  I was frustrated not suicidal.

But I nurtured a vision, a dream that one day I would leave that place and build myself a big house. 

And I was going to pave the entire yard, and every year I would go outside and fertilize the pavement with salt just to make sure that NOTHING GREW.

However, we built our house in a planned subdivision and both the housing covenant and my wife prohibited that type of landscaping.

All this time though, I’ve remembered the growth killing power of salt.

Hebrews chapter 12 urges Christians to “Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord.”  The author wants to prevent us from “[falling] short of the grace of God” and becoming “defiled.”

Now (and here’s the connect to my grass-cutting rant), the passage tells HOW Christians fall short of grace and become defiled.  It tells how we fail to pursue peace and holiness.

“lest any root of bitterness springing up cause trouble”

We get angry.  We feel wronged.  We have moments of envy, jealousy, wrath, lust, etc., etc.  Yes, WE, as in we CHRISTIANS.  But, we fight those sinful feelings.  We turn from them, rebuke, push them down, pray them away.  We stop, get ahold of ourselves, and breathe.  We cut off, or shall I say, “We mow down,” the weeds of sinful thinking.

But the grass always grows back.

Just when you think you’ve conquered your anger, “That chick said what?”  Now you gotta crank up your spiritual engine and cut back your emotions again.

It’s exhausting.

What you need is a way to kill the root of bitterness so it can’t spring back up to cause you trouble.

You need SALT.

And you have some.  More specifically, you are some.

Jesus said, “You are the salt of the earth” (Matthew 5:13)

Fertilize your emotional landscape with your own spiritual salt.

How?

Colossians 4: 6.

Let your speech always be with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer each one. 

Salt your emotional ground with what Paul had previously advised in Colossians.

Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection.  (Colossians 3: 12-14)

Spread your spiritual salt all over your emotional landscape by being good to people---- to all people.

My grandmother and the women of her generation all seemed so calm, so centered, so sure of who they were, so at peace with their choices and circumstances.  It was Zen-like.

Now, I remember them singing to themselves.  When their men or their children or their circumstances got out of line, they would cook, or clean, or do whatever was their normal task for the day, and they would quietly hum the old hymns, and sometimes ad-lib Bible verses into the lines.

It was Zen-like. 

It was genius.

It was Scripture.

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord. And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him. (Colossians 3: 16-17)

Spread your spiritual salt by praising God---- in all situations. 

Hum those hymns and gospel songs.  Treat every assignment and task as a chance to glorify Jesus.  Thank God---- for everything.

You’ll kill the roots of bitterness, and one day you’ll look out and realize that you don’t have to trim the edge off your anger anymore.  The bitterness will be dead, dried up from the root.

And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; and be thankful (Colossians 3: 15)

You’ll be living the dream.

---Rev. Anderson T. Graves II   (email:  atgravestwo2@aol.com )

Anderson T. Graves II is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church (5220 Myron Massey Boulevard) in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my blog at www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com  

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

A WORD TO THE WISE. Proverbs 29: 22

Proverbs 29: 22     An angry man stirs up strife, and a furious man abounds in transgression.

Proverbs 29: 22.   Before Cain killed his brother Abel, God confronted Cain about the danger of surrendering to his “anger issues.”

So the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen?  If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.” (Genesis 4: 6)

The Apostle Paul, a bachelor whose writings about submission have been fodder for many a his & her argument over the years, admonished men to reject the image of the perpetually angry husband.

Husbands, love your wives and do not be bitter toward them. (Colossians 3: 19)

The Apostle Peter, Jesus’ best friend, warned against being perpetually angry and refusing to understand the other person, especially when you have the power to dominate the other person in a relationship.  Peter said that this kind of relational meanness is so abominable that God won’t even listen to you while you practice it.

Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered.  (1 Peter 3:7)

Jesus Himself taught that unchecked “anger issues” put you in spiritual danger from the judgment of God.

But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. (Matthew 5: 22)

You can get mad without actually sinning (Ephesians 4: 26), but if you carry that anger and bitterness from day to day, to day, to day---- you’re walking into dangerous and prohibited spiritual territory.

That evil, ugly, chip-on-the-shoulder-so-big-you-can’t-walk-straight attitude you project all the doggone time?  Let it go.

Maybe it did all start because someone did you wrong.  Maybe you started acting this way because everybody around you was mean and angry.  Maybe this is your defense mechanism, a way you’ve learned to cope so that you don’t get hurt again.  Maybe so. 

But that’s not all it is anymore. 

Perpetual anger, nurtured bitterness, grudges hoarded and held over time melt into a weight on your soul that draws sin to you and from you.

Haven’t you noticed how people can be in a room happy and at ease with one another until one certain other person arrives.  The moment that person enters the room the entire mood gets darker.  The weight of one person’s bitterness and anger can be a black hole that sucks up all the joy and ejects streams of strife in its wake.

Your anger doesn’t protect you from drama.  It contributes to the drama.  Your bitterness does not make you immune to haters.  It makes you susceptible to sin. (Proverbs 22: 10)

Don’t just manage your anger; relinquish it. 

Don’t just learn to live at peace with you bitterness.  Learn to live without it.     

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Hall Memorial CME Church in Montgomery, Alabama.

Call  334-288-0577
Email atgravestwo2@aol.com
Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

To hear sermons, read devotions, and learn more about the ministry at Hall Memorial CME Church, visit www.hallmemorialcme@blogspotcom.

If you enjoy our work, please help support our work in the community. Send a donation of any amount by check or money order.
Mail all contributions to :
Hall Memorial CME Church
541 Seibles Road
Montgomery, AL 36116

A WORD TO THE WISE. Proverbs 29: 22

Proverbs 29: 22     An angry man stirs up strife, and a furious man abounds in transgression.

Proverbs 29: 22.   Before Cain killed his brother Abel, God confronted Cain about the danger of surrendering to his “anger issues.”

So the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? And why has your countenance fallen?  If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin lies at the door. And its desire is for you, but you should rule over it.” (Genesis 4: 6)

The Apostle Paul, a bachelor whose writings about submission have been fodder for many a his & her argument over the years, admonished men to reject the image of the perpetually angry husband.

Husbands, love your wives and do not be bitter toward them. (Colossians 3: 19)

The Apostle Peter, Jesus’ best friend, warned against being perpetually angry and refusing to understand the other person, especially when you have the power to dominate the other person in a relationship.  Peter said that this kind of relational meanness is so abominable that God won’t even listen to you while you practice it.

Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered.  (1 Peter 3:7)

Jesus Himself taught that unchecked “anger issues” put you in spiritual danger from the judgment of God.

But I say to you that whoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. (Matthew 5: 22)

You can get mad without actually sinning (Ephesians 4: 26), but if you carry that anger and bitterness from day to day, to day, to day---- you’re walking into dangerous and prohibited spiritual territory.

That evil, ugly, chip-on-the-shoulder-so-big-you-can’t-walk-straight attitude you project all the doggone time?  Let it go.

Maybe it did all start because someone did you wrong.  Maybe you started acting this way because everybody around you was mean and angry.  Maybe this is your defense mechanism, a way you’ve learned to cope so that you don’t get hurt again.  Maybe so. 

But that’s not all it is anymore. 

Perpetual anger, nurtured bitterness, grudges hoarded and held over time melt into a weight on your soul that draws sin to you and from you.

Haven’t you noticed how people can be in a room happy and at ease with one another until one certain other person arrives.  The moment that person enters the room the entire mood gets darker.  The weight of one person’s bitterness and anger can be a black hole that sucks up all the joy and ejects streams of strife in its wake.

Your anger doesn’t protect you from drama.  It contributes to the drama.  Your bitterness does not make you immune to haters.  It makes you susceptible to sin. (Proverbs 22: 10)

Don’t just manage your anger; relinquish it. 

Don’t just learn to live at peace with you bitterness.  Learn to live without it.     

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Hall Memorial CME Church in Montgomery, Alabama.

Call  334-288-0577
Email atgravestwo2@aol.com
Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

To hear sermons, read devotions, and learn more about the ministry at Hall Memorial CME Church, visit www.hallmemorialcme@blogspotcom.

If you enjoy our work, please help support our work in the community. Send a donation of any amount by check or money order.
Mail all contributions to :
Hall Memorial CME Church
541 Seibles Road
Montgomery, AL 36116