A young girl writing a paper for school came to her father and asked, "Dad, what is the difference between anger and exasperation?"
The father replied, "It is mostly a matter of degree. Let me show you what I mean."
With that the father went to the telephone and dialed a number at random. "Hello, is Melvin there?"
The man answered, "There is no one living here named Melvin. Why don't you learn to look up numbers before you dial them?"
"See," said the father to his daughter. "That man was not a bit happy with our call and we annoyed him. Now watch...."
The father dialed the number again. "Hello, is Melvin there?" he repeated.
"Now look here!" came the heated reply. "You just called this number andI told you that there is no Melvin here! You've got a lot of nerve calling again!" The receiver slammed down hard.
The father turned to his daughter and said, "That was anger. Now I'll show you what exasperation means."
He dialed the same number and when a violent voice roared 'Hello!' in answer, the father calmly said, "Hello, this is Melvin. Have there been any calls for me?"
Okay, you're right - I copied that from a clean jokes site (www.basicjokes.com) but I couldn't think of a better example of one of humanity's most common temptations: anger. We want to subdivide it into good, bad or justified. We bury it, whitewash it or pretend it isn't there. Whatever mechanism we use to avoid dealing with it, however, I've found there is only one way to restore broken relationships: confession, forgiveness and letting God replace it with His healing love.
"let every [person] be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; for the wrath of men does not produce the righteousness of God." James 1:19
