Daily Lesson for October 22, 2015

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Psalm 37:

8 Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath!
Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil.
9 For the evildoers shall be cut off,
but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land.
10 In just a little while, the wicked will be no more;
though you look carefully at his place, he will not be there.
11 But the meek shall inherit the land
and delight themselves in abundant peace.

There is an old saying around West Texas that the meek shall inherit the earth, but somebody else always gets the mineral rights.

There is much wrong with the world -- things which make no sense and things which are absolutely unjust. Those who have much (individuals or groups or government) are given more, while those who have little (individuals or groups or government), even what they have is taken away.  Is it any wonder that so many people are so angry?

Yet, we are told in Scripture to refrain from evil and turn from wrath.  Jesus was hunted like a lion, yet he was said to have neither broken a bruised reed nor quenched a dying wick. He continued to walk gently on the earth. He may have been angry -- how could he not be?  -- but he did not sin in his anger.

In her memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou wrote about her grandmother whom she called Momma and the little store she ran in Stamps, Arkansas in the 1930s. One day some cruel girls from town came and ridiculed Momma with some of the grossest indignities in her own store, knowing they could get away with it because they were white and Momma was black. Maya wrote that when the girls left her Momma saw that she was seething with anger and hurt and even hatred.

"She looked at me until I looked up," Maya wrote.  "Her face was a brown moon that shone on me.  She was beautiful. Then she bent down and touched me as mothers of the church 'lay hands on the sick and afflicted' and I quieted.

"'Go wash your face, Sister.' And she went behind the counter and hummed, 'Glory, glory, hallelujah, when I lay my burden down.'"

To learn to sing as the caged bird sings is to discover a peace which surpasses all understanding, and is to proclaim a hallelujah even when everything seems to be going to hell.

Surely such meekness shall inherit the earth -- and Heaven along the way.