During the recent snowstorm we had, my wife unknowingly parked in a parking space that someone else had shoveled out for herself. By the time she parked there, almost every parking space in our complex had been cleared out, so it seemed harmless to take whatever space was available. But when she returned to her car, there was an angry note on her windshield. 

The note read something like, “I don’t appreciate you parking in the parking space that I shoveled out for myself. I had to get surgery and was counting on being able to park in that space when I got back. That’s why I put the orange cone there.” 

The problem is that, when my wife parked there, there was no orange cone. It was simply one of many empty parking spaces. She also had no way of knowing that the person who shoveled it out was having surgery. Nor was this an assigned or handicapped parking space. It was truly an innocent misunderstanding, but this misunderstanding created an unfortunate chain reaction.

Anger is a funny thing. It often seems as if it’s contagious. For example, my wife unknowingly parked in a parking space that another woman believed belonged to her. The woman got angry and left an inflammatory note on my wife’s car. When my wife read the note, she got angry. Feeling she was unjustly criticized, I then got angry on my wife’s behalf. But I soon began to see the absurdity of all of this anger over a parking space. 

As I sat with this thought for a while, it occurred to me that resentment is really a distraction. In fact, it’s a deadly distraction in that it separates us from God. It prevents us from looking to him for guidance and listening for his quiet voice. Resentment convinces us that our feelings are more important what Jesus’s says is the greatest commandments of all, which is to love God with all of our heart, soul, and mind, and to love our neighbors as ourselves (Matthew 22:36-40 NIV). To willfully hold onto a resentment is to defy God himself. 

And so we have a decision to make. We can either be angry or we can be obedient. We can hold onto resentments or we can make room in our hearts to hear God’s voice. We can be right, at least in our own minds, or we can forgive and be free. As it says in the book of Matthew 6:14-15, if we forgive others, God will forgive us, but if we choose not to forgive, we will also not be forgiven. A heart filled with anger has no room for love and, since we are told that God is love, that means that a heart filled with anger has no room for God (1 John 4:8). 

Robert Van Valkenburgh
Grappling With Divinity

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