Jumping to Conclusions

My devotions today started with reading a portion from "Our Daily Bread" (which is available to anyone on the internet.) The verse proposed was from the book of Ecclesiastes chapter 7 verse 9, and it says

"Do not be quickly provoked in your spirit, for anger resides in the lap of fools."
-Ecclesiastes 7:9 NIV

After reading this over and over I sought out where in my life this personally speaks to me. Our Daily Bread gave a small testimony of someone jumping to a conclusion and where it would result in a major and unnecessary conflict. After reading the verse many different cliches and proverbs jumped into my head about giving people the benefit of the doubt or being the better person and not judging but its not easy.

I then tried to think of how quickly anger leads automatically to conflict. That in general if anger is expressed subtly or explosively that underlying attitude will be picked up and it will be the beginning of conflict. Even if we can do well to mask our anger that anger is still evident in the way our tone might be, because anger is something we all know too well and know all the tricks behind it. The challenge then is not how do we hide our anger but how do we control it to the point that it doesn't dictate out actions and attitude.