Psalm 37:8: Set the Anger Down

Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret—it leads only to evil.

Psalm 37:8 (NIV)

Set the Anger Down

There’s a man on the second belt in the parcel hall who’s fast in the way that looks slow. No wasted reach, no hunting for the label. He whistles the whole shift, and you can hear him over the rollers two stations down.

Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret—it leads only to evil. The man being told this is watching people get ahead by doing wrong and getting away with it, and he’s being told to quit feeding what that does to him.

The anger has a real cause. Something is actually crooked, and he sees it accurately. The warning is about where the fretting goes, and where it goes is named: it leads only to evil.

In place of it he’s given plenty to do. Trust God, do good, stay in the land he’s been given, and wait there. None of that requires the crooked thing to stop first.

Those who hope in the Lord inherit the land. So do the meek, and they get peace on it. The ones who waited end up with the ground, and the ones who took it are not mentioned again.

Plenty of people have been angry for years over a thing that actually happened to them. Nobody here is telling them they misread the situation. The instruction is about what they do next, while the situation stays exactly as crooked as it is.

Anger doesn’t get set down the way a bag gets set down. It goes out slowly, and mostly while your hands are busy elsewhere. So the help is practical, and it’s aimed first at the man in the psalm, who trusts the Lord and does good and waits in the country promised to him. Anyone reading the psalm now can do good while the crooked thing is still standing, and that much carries straight over.

The whistling is how he keeps his hands on the beat when the belt speeds up. He picked the tune years ago for its tempo and hasn’t thought about it since.