He who is slow to to wrath has great understanding, but he who is impulsive exalts folly. Proverbs 14:29
There was a man on my street who went out into his Rose garden one morning and saw three of his young English Roses chewed off at the soil line. They laid flat on their sides. Each had fallen victim to a hungry Gopher, who had just the day before robbed the man of most of his Carrot crop. To say that he was angry may have been an understatement, for after a spate of cursing and stomping about, he vowed to ride his garden from this bloated pest that very morning.
This is how he devised to do that little rodent in. First, he went throughout all the garden and tamped down each of the open holes he could find Then he went to his gas grill and unhooked the propane tank and hose line. With this he poked the line into one of the main gopher burrows and began to fill the network of tunnels with gas. He went around the yard for about twenty minutes filling as many burrows as he could find. At the last one, he left the whole slightly opened and struck a match.
There come many times in life when we just feel like blowing up. Feelings get hurt, stress has made us weak, we suffer some perceived loss; and when this happens our pride gets stepped on causing the anger inside of us can grow to explosive proportions. God instructs us to go slow when this happens. He doesn’t tell us to stuff our anger completely, but to carefully consider the situation, pray, and then act accordingly. God wishes our actions to live up to His standards, that we might bring honor to Him in all situations. Look what happens when we blow up; feelings are hurt, bridges may get burned, our reputation can get tarnished, and the level of trust people have in us, diminishes. Proverbs 29:11 says ” A fool gives full vent to his anger, but a wise man keeps themselves under control”. James warns about our tongue, ” see how great a forest is kindled by a small spark”. James 3:6.
You may be wondering how that Gopher story turned out… As you might have guessed, this man who had became quickly inflamed by his anger, brought new emphasis to the word ‘folly’. When that match hit the gopher hole, an explosion could be heard for blocks around. Soil flew into the air and a fireball erupted all across his backyard. A group of Junipers by his back fence caught fire and soon his fence was on fire, too. His entire rose garden was blown from the ground and lay smoldering, destroyed. The hair on his head was badly singed and his clothes rested smoldering against his shocked body. He never did find out what happened to that Gopher, but it appears to have won the war.