I Am Angrier Than The Customers Are

The woman on Thursday was hardly upset at all.

That is the detail that has stayed with you. She was mildly put out. She said one mild thing and she was perfectly polite about it.

And something went up in you that had nothing to do with her, and you had to work at keeping it out of your voice, and you are not certain you managed it.

You are angrier about this than your customers are.

That is the actual situation. Most of them are mildly inconvenienced and moving on with their lives. You are eleven weeks in and something is running hot every single day.

Here is how you found out how bad it is.

Somebody who has worked for you for four years checked with you before bringing a small problem over. Checked. Watched your face first.

She has never done that in four years, and she did it on Tuesday, and you saw her do it.

So the situation now is not the incident. Nobody in your building is being harmed by the incident.

They are being managed. By your own people. Around you.

There is a verse about anger that does something unexpected with it, and the unexpected part is the useful part.

Let not the sun go down upon your wrath

Paul writes about anger and the first thing he does is startling.

Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath. (Ephesians 4:26, King James Version)

Be ye angry. He permits it. That is where the verse starts.

There is no instruction anywhere in it to stop being angry, and no suggestion that the anger itself is the fault. What follows is a boundary and a deadline, and nothing more.

You have been given a deadline rather than a verdict, and the Holy Spirit is the one who wrote it that way. Ephesians 4:26 opens with be ye angry rather than with a prohibition, and He is not the one who has been telling you that the anger makes you a bad man.

Now the deadline, because that is the whole mechanism.

Let not the sun go down upon your wrath. One day. That is the limit. Not never; not forever; one day.

And what happens with wrath that carries over is exactly what has been happening. It stops being about the thing and becomes the weather in a building, and after eleven weeks nobody remembers what it was originally about.

You are eleven weeks past a one day limit, and it is written that the sun is not to go down upon it. The Spirit of God is the one who set that limit, and He set it because He knows what accumulated anger does to a room.

And notice the anger is treated as yours to put down rather than as something to be waited out.

The verse does not say wait until you feel better. It gives a man an action and a time by which to have done it. That is a very practical arrangement and it assumes he can.

You have something you are able to do rather than a feeling to wait on, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes the putting down possible. Scripture puts an action and a deadline in the same sentence, and Ephesians 4 assumes it is.

What the anger is actually about

Let me name it, because eleven weeks of running hot at customers who are mildly inconvenienced means the anger has a different address.

It is not about the woman on Thursday. It is not even about the incident.

It is that something was decided a long way from your building, by people who will never stand where you stand, and you carry every consequence of it at a counter with your own face on.

That is a real thing to be angry about. Nobody should tell you it is not.

You have a legitimate anger that has been aimed at the wrong people, and it is written that a man may be angry without sinning. The Spirit of God is the one who knows the true address of it, and Ephesians 4:26 permits the anger while it corrects the target.

And here is the cost, and it is the one that will move you.

The woman who checked your face on Tuesday. That is the cost. Four years of a person bringing you problems freely, and now there is a check.

Everybody in that building is doing a version of it. That is what happens around a man running hot, and it is not their fault and they are not being unreasonable.

You are the one who can end that by sundown, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has been showing you her face all week. The written word gives you a deadline rather than a diagnosis, and Ephesians 4 is why it registered.

Four minutes outside

So here is the thing to do, and it is physical, and it is four minutes.

Before the next hard conversation, go outside. Actually outside, through a door, into the air.

Stand there for four minutes and do not think about the incident. Do not rehearse. Be outside for four minutes and then go back in and have the conversation.

You are putting something down rather than suppressing it, and Ephesians 4:26 gives an action and a sundown rather than a rule about feelings. The Spirit of God is the one who does something in four minutes of air that cannot be done at a counter.

And the second half, which is the deadline itself. At the end of the day, before you drive home, say it out loud: I am putting this down. In the truck, once. Name the day and say it is finished.

That is what let not the sun go down actually looks like in a working life. It is not a mood. It is a sentence said at a specific hour.

You have been given a specific hour rather than an aspiration, and the Holy Spirit is the one who receives it at that hour. It is written that the sun is not to go down upon a man's wrath, and Ephesians 4:26 is the whole warrant for the sentence.

Then open in the morning and let your own people bring you things without checking your face.