A Dish Best Served Cold

I have flaws - many of them. Most of them I'm aware of, some I'm not. One I am keenly aware of, day in and day out, that requires constant attention, discipline, and restraint, is my revenge bone. Whether on the softball field (darned Methodists), the football field (cheating Pi Kapps), the workplace, etc., it's something that is constantly causing an inner struggle within me when someone does something "wrong." The crazy thing is, it doesn't even have to be done specifically to me; simply doing something to someone I love, friend or family, makes them my foe.

So imagine how I feel when I get a call this morning from my brother. Immediately I know something has to be wrong - phone calls on a Sunday morning before church are never good things. Then he proceeds to tell me that some low life thug criminal broke in to my 88 year old aunt's home, beat her, tied her up, stole her car and money, cut her phone line, and left.

What would you want to do? I mean what possible explanation could a person have for wanting or even needing to beat up an 88 year old lady? Sure, the Ivey women are a feisty bunch, more so the ones that married in to the clan, but just how much fight could there be versus a 200 lb. prison escapee? Who on this earth would even want to associate with the likes of this reprobate?
She has just undergone surgery on her eye - he smashed her socket with an iron holder; the current prognosis is that she will lose sight. She probably has some bruised ribs, but those will heal. The emotional and mental scars probably never will. This is a sweet, kind, open-hearted "lil ol' lady" of the South, the kind that would open her door to a coward in sheep's clothing that claimed he was selling Bibles for a mission trip. I doubt she'll ever even be able to live in her own house, on her own, just as she has been for God knows how many years now (her husband passed several years ago).

I pray that God will take this anger, this revenge filled rage from me, the part of me that wants to use the creative Godly gifts I have for that of evil, just so I can satisfy my own desire and to feel justice has been done. For I know justice will be done, and one day this malcontent will have to answer, either in this life or the one that immediately begins at his expiration date. I pray that when my vision is clouded, that the gentle breeze of his love will clear the distortion caused ultimately by a flaw that I have. I pray that flaw never, ever, has me.

Amen.

ps- if by sheer happenstance the billy club of the pursuing officer were to be thrust forcefully in to this guy's stomach, knee, head, foot, ankle, groin, ribs, shoulder, and pancreas, I'm okay with that, too.