Good Morning Everyone,
Our theme for this month: “Conflict”
Our Bible verse for today: “To start a conflict is to release a flood; stop the dispute before it breaks out.” Proverbs 17:14 (HCSB)
Our thought for today: “Conflicts can quickly get out of control”
Rushing water can be terribly destructive. Once a flood starts, there’s little that can be done to hold it back. During the current cycle of extreme weather that is being experienced around the world, we frequently see stories on the news about raging floods sweeping away everything in its path. Several years ago the island nation of Japan experienced a massive tsunami. As the result of an offshore earthquake, a massive wall of water 30 feet high swept in from the ocean and devastated entire costal cities and towns.
Conflict often takes on the characteristics of a raging flood. Once it starts it can be hard to stop. If the reason for the conflict isn’t quickly brought out in the open by the two parties and dealt with, it can build and swell and soon become like that tsunami, a raging and consuming wall of conflict that can be devastating.
Shifting metaphors – unresolved conflict can sometimes be like a volcano. It lies beneath the surface bubbling and building. As each aggrieved party thinks about it and stews over it, the thing begins to grow in each of their minds. Each begins to imagine nefarious and devious motives on the part of the other. Each starts to fantasize about future encounters with their enemy where they dress-down that person and set them straight – usually to the applause and admiration of an observing crowd. And so the thing begins to take on a life of its own in the minds of the combatants and soon, like a volcano, it spews over and becomes something much more than it ever should have been.
I’m mixing metaphors here (floods, volcanoes, festering stews), but you get the point. Conflict left unchecked and unresolved quickly gets out of control. Solomon’s advice in Proverbs 17:14 is that we are to avoid the conflict to begin with. If you can’t prevent it from starting, then at least follow the instructions Jesus gave us in Matthew 18:15-17 and deal with it quickly because conflict left unchecked, can quickly get out of control.
God Bless,
Pastor Jim
Oak Hill Baptist Church 