Angry Birds!

Remember how Sesame Street used to always end with “Today’s show was brought to you by the letter R” because all of the things throughout the episode had been about rabbits or raspberries or rainbows or radios? The common theme of everything was obviously named in the end so that just in case you missed all of the ways that the letter R was thrown in throughout the last hour they spelled it out for you.

I think if God were to have end credits for my day today it would go something like “Andi’s day was brought to you by the letter forgiveness”. It seemed to be the common theme throughout the day. I’ve had a lot of practice at forgiveness, and have witnessed firsthand the beautiful things and restoration of relationships that can come because of it…. and yet so often I just don’t want to. I am content in my justifiable anger.

Today I encountered a lot of people that I would like to hit rather than hug, I also drove 3 hours back to Tallahassee having to continually practice forgiveness for the other drivers on the road. I spent the majority of that time listening to a sermon by Perry Noble, and so as not to deviate from today’s theme, it happened to be all about forgiveness.

He talked about how when we don’t forgive we’re like angry birds… that's right, the wondefully addictive smartphone app that has captured the world’s attention.  We launch ourselves at the object of our anger, we may or may not cause them harm but ultimately the bird blows up. They may hurt the pig but whether or not they do they always hurt themselves. (if you are lost because you’ve not yet experienced this game, google it, there’s a way to play it online, just make sure you have 3 hours to devote to it because you will get sucked in).

Tonight while I was talking to Clay about the frustrations that come from people who continually hurt me, or worse, continually hurt those that I love, I was getting myself all worked up all over again. He hugged me and said “You certainly are a feisty one, I love that about you. You balance me out. I’m the slow building smoldering type of anger. You on the other hand are a bottle rocket. (followed by fireworks and explosion sound effects) You just have to be careful not to blow yourself up”.

Here’s to me getting better at being “kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you”. I kind of suck at this right now, but I guess it’s either I learn how to get better at it or I end up blowing myself up like an angry bird.