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PRAYER FOR THE WEEK
Jesus, teach me to speak up when someone's anger is scaring me! Amen.


Jesus went to the temple in Jerusalem and couldn't believe what He saw. People were selling animals right in the temple and even making others pay to get in! Jesus made a whip and drove them all out of the temple, flipping over the tables of money and yelling, "Stop making my Father's house into a marketplace!"

Angry people can be scary. Whether it's your little sister having a tantrum or your dad thundering about someone denting his car, just hearing the yells and seeing their red faces can really bother you. It's even scarier if the person is angry with you!

What's easy to forget when someone else is angry is that you've been angry a time or two yourself. You were once as young as your sister, screaming that you'd only eat pretzels for dinner; you were red-faced and yelling not long ago when you broke a toy you loved.

In this week's Gospel (John 2:13-25), Jesus gets really angry. It's the only time we read about Him red-faced and yelling; He even forces bad people out of the temple and tosses their stuff, too.

Anger is a way of saying something has happened that you can't control, and your feelings about it are so big, they come out in a dramatic way. When your sister has a tantrum, she's saying she wants to control what she eats. It's scary when your dad yells, but he'll calm down when he remembers that a dented car can be fixed.

Hurting people and things and scaring others is not OK, even when you're really angry. That's why we only read about Jesus getting really angry once - and He was angry over something that was a big deal. People were treating the temple, His church, like a mall.

Most things that make you angry will pass, and it's not OK to scare people with your anger. But Jesus' situation was so disturbing, it was worth getting angry over![[In-content Ad]]

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