Triggered

A lady is preparing for a dinner party and a friend pops up to visit. He offers his help and she explains to him, ‘soon after he can come to assist her husband with moving some tables.’ Later the friend shows up to their house and she notices three other gentlemen with him. She is not happy about the extra company, which her friend brought over. She goes on because she doesn’t have much time until the guest arrive.

They finish in a timely manner and once the dinner is over mysteriously, the friend and three other gentlemen appear. At this point the lady is puzzled. As they are cleaning up they say good- bye and once she enters the kitchen, she notices all the food is gone.

She thinks of not having anything to eat and the plans she made for the left over food. As she thinks more she concludes that her friend and uninvited guest took the food. She calls her friend and he admits to taking the food.

The lady is more furious because she has not eaten, her plans for the food are demolished and the apology her friend gave could not change the reality of the food being gone.
Anger has a way of creeping in and controlling us without permission. The lady had every right to feel as she felt but she is still responsible for controlling her anger.

This scenario gives me the impression that maybe these people were hungry and that is why they took the food. Yet it does not justify them taking it without asking nor the lady loosing control. “But whosoever hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him"(1 John 3:17)?

Maybe you struggle with controlling your emotions. Perhaps giving is out of reach for you because you can’t seem to perceive giving as a great blessing. Do you loose control and miss the big picture at hand? What thoughts jab at you and cause your reactions to react according to your emotions? Our emotions respond according to the thoughts we are feeding off of.

The lady in the story was being feed with thoughts of being hungry and not having food for another time. Christ wants us to feed our minds with divine truth. The scripture says we are to have a gut feeling in our stomach that causes us to want to give to another that is without. Instead, this woman listened to the gut feeling that said, “I am hungry.”

Her emotions responded to her fleshly thoughts not the scripture. Possibly she has a mental issue. How do you react when you see someone in need? Do you initially think of what you don’t have? Can you consider the needs of others first?

Consider depositing divine truth for your thoughts. Pray to God to help you guard your mind when you are triggered by anger. Ask God to control your thoughts to focus on His Word. Call upon the Lord to have mercy on you for allowing your emotions to lead you. Pray that you do not have constraint in your affections so the Spirit may fill you with divine truth (2 Corinthians 6:12).