Taking Anger to Prayer

I read a Facebook post that said, “I am so angry at God today. This is the sixth day in a row I have sat at my sister’s bedside, watching her suffer in pain, waiting, just waiting, for God to take her. Why doesn’t he? This is so unfair to all of us.”

I have to restrain myself from offering an immediate reply to assuage her anger. Anger is an emotion I am learning to navigate. So far, I have learned that it is better to express it in prayer than to hold it in or deny it. Is it OK to curse in prayer? I don’t know. But, if I am being honest, I do. It’s where I am at the moment. I’d like to think God’s love is big enough to say, “Bring it on!”

When I am angry at God, and even wanting to shout out all my hostility, I put myself in the scene of the Crucifixion. I watch the crowd shouting at Jesus in anger for claiming to be the Son of God. I can identify with their frustration at their lot in life and at witnessing Jesus not being the Messiah they expected, one who would take away all their oppression.

I see the women crying at the foot of the Cross. And I have to make a choice of where I shall stand in this all-too-human crowd. Despite the rage I felt just moments earlier, I move to the foot of the Cross, at the feet of the crucified Christ. This is where I belong, not in the hostile crowd. I am not feeling guilt for my anger. Instead, I feel a solidarity. Jesus understood agony. Rather than atoning for my anger, I reconnect with a God who says, “I am in agony over this too, with you.”

All of us die, and often that causes pain for those we love and those who love us. We want to blame someone or something. But when there is no clear culprit, we blame God, like some Wizard of Oz who could grant our wishes but is choosing not to.

So where is God in all this? God is in the very love we feel when our hearts break and in the love of that sister sitting by the bedside. We aren’t angry at God but rather at an out-of-control situation that is breaking our hearts. We are angry because we love something that we think we are losing. We are angry because of the injustice of life playing out before our eyes in the body of someone we love. God is in that love. In fact, God is that love.