Anger

On March 28th of 2004, “Shannon Kramer's plans to fire a rocket toward his girlfriend went awry when the firework ricocheted inside his car and dived between his legs, bursting in a display that burned hair and skin from his feet to his groin, police said.

Kramer, 35, told The Florida Times-Union he lit a fuse on the 6-inch-rocket, but wasn't able to get it out the window of his Ford Mustang before it went off. Seconds later, after the rocket blasted around inside the car, Kramer was burned and temporarily blinded.

’I thought I was dead,’ he said. ‘I couldn't see, I couldn't hear. I went to stand up and I couldn't walk.’ Kramer said he suffered second-degree burns and a cut on one leg. His eyelashes and a lot of body hair are gone and an outline of his sandals is burned onto his feet.

Jacksonville police were called to the explosion about 9:30 p.m. Sunday and were told a man who had been threatening his girlfriend with a bomb had a mishap. Kramer said he was only playing a prank and was intending to fire the rocket out the window as he passed . . . . Kramer said the rocket, which resembled a bottle rocket, was the diameter of a golf ball. ‘I had a couple but this was the biggest,’ he said. ‘No more of those.’”

Kramer, very foolishly, was playing with an explosive that was highly dangerous. He lost control, it exploded, and he was blinded, deafened, and badly burned. Anger is a lot like that bottle-rocket. When a person has a short fuse, he very often loses control. In a moment of provocation, his temper explodes, and in the moment of rage, he is blind and deaf to all reason. But when all is said in done, he, and often many others are severely burned.

Source: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/04/01/national/main609872.shtml

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Brian Hedges is Senior Pastor of Fulkerson Park Baptist Church in Niles, MI.