Anger Is Dangerous

Ec 7:9; Mt 5:22; Ro 12:19; Ga 5:20; Job 5:2; Pr 19:19; Pr 25:28;

Secrets can be destructive, no matter how long they've been buried, as residents of a Ukraine village found out. The Associated Press reported their story this way:

For 43 years Zinaida Bragantsova had been telling people there was a World War II bomb buried under her bed.

The story began in 1941 when the Germans advanced toward the Ukrainian city of Berdyansk. One night at the very start of the war, she was sitting by the window and sewing on her machine. Suddenly a noise was heard and a whistling close by. She got up and in the following moment was struck by a blast of wind. When she came to, the sewing machine was gone and there was a hole in the floor as well as in the ceiling.

Zinaida couldn't get any officials to check out her story, so she just moved her bed over the hole and lived with it—for the next 40 years. Finally, the woman's problem was uncovered. As phone cable was being laid in the area, demolition experts were called in to probe for buried explosives. "Where's your bomb, grandma?" asked the smiling army lieutenant sent to talk to Mrs. Bragantsova. "No doubt, under your bed?"

"Under my bed," Mrs. Bragantsova answered dryly.

And sure enough, there they found a 500-pound bomb. After evacuating 2,000 people from surrounding buildings, the bomb squad detonated the bomb. According to the report, "The grandmother, freed of her bomb, will soon receive a new apartment."

Many people live like that grandmother, with a bomb under the bed—a terrible secret, a great hurt, a seething anger that lays there for years while everyone goes on about their business. No one is safe until it's removed.

Associated Press