¹⁹ Understand this, my dear brothers and sisters: You must all be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry. ²⁰ Human anger does not produce the righteousness God desires. ²¹ So get rid of all the filth and evil in your lives, and humbly accept the word God has planted in your hearts, for it has the power to save your souls.

James 1:19-21

Dear God, it is interesting that James prefaces the “filth and evil” with talking about anger. To just read verse 21 by itself, my mind might go to the things I watch, listen to, or read. But when I read more closely and check out the footnotes, it says the filth and evil is literally translated “abundance of malice.”

While I still have some malice in my life, I can feel the slow transformation in these areas. While I still am too quick to speak sometimes, I am getting so much better at listening and asking questions of others. The things I get angry about are fewer and fewer. Some Christians would say that I’m getting soft on sin or that I am not living in my convictions enough. I am too tolerant of others and I’m letting them die. But somehow it doesn’t feel that way. It feels like I am seeing people more and more with your eyes. I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt more and more. And so while I might not be living into verse 21 in isolation, in the context of verses 19 and 20, maybe I am.

Father, I don’t want to miss you. I don’t want to miss when you do, indeed, want me to be righteously angry about something. But I don’t want to miss the opportunity to love someone who needs loved. I was with someone recently who is so unsettled. Their spirit is so unsettled. If I were closer to that person (both physically, we are separated by over 1,000 miles) and figuratively, I would love to be able to minister to them a little. But there are plenty of people within my sphere who are like them. So help me, Father, to love well, to see others with your eyes, and to be a minister of your presence.

I pray this in Jesus and with your Holy Spirit,

Amen