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A GROOVE IN THE BRAIN (10:00)

She's taken quite a beating lately in the world of media public relations, but I have to make a confession: I do like a book co-written by a certain radio personality named Schlessinger - better known as Dr. Laura. There's a fair amount of insight to be found in this book entitled The Ten Commandments: The Significance of God's Laws in Everyday Life. We shared some material a year or so ago from Chapter Ten, which deals with the temptation of coveting. Being discontent with the things we have, and resenting other people for the things they have.

Of course, the tendency to hold a grudge, to nurse a grudge, is part and parcel of that very temptation, so we go back to her radio archives to find an anecdote illustrating the dilemma. And Dr. Laura tells about a woman who called her radio show - and confessed that she was being just eaten alive with jealousy and resentment over a friend who had landed a great job.

Has that ever happened to you? Someone else is riding high: new job, new car, long, expensive vacation. And this person is your friend! But as you compare your pay stub with theirs, your Polaroid journal describing your trip to Fresno in a Winnebago with their digital diary about Denmark and the blue Danube . . . you begin to nurse a grudge.
We chose this as a series title: I'VE GOT TO NURSE THIS GRUDGE BECAUSE IT'S SICK! Think with me about what a nurse does. He or she hovers over you - at least in the days before HMOs - paying attention to you. Are you comfortable? Can I get another pillow for you? Here's a pill to shrink your swelling or mask your pain. Here's a drink of water; here's a tray of yummy cafeteria jell-o. They make you the center of attention, the focal point of their own lives.

And you know, when we nurse a grudge, isn't that what we do? We pay endless attention to the hurt, to the envy. We play a scene over and over in our minds, fluffing up the pillows around our pain, feeding our bruised ego all sorts of medicines so it can grow and flourish. We don't want to let our grudge check out of the hospital - oh no - but we want it to be as healthy as possible in the intensive care ward.
Well, what does Dr. Laura advise this jealous radio caller to do?

"I suggested she throw a congratulations party for her [friend,]" she writes in her book, "or send her a congratulatory note, or something that would express the exact opposite of what her envy might lead her to do."

Would that be hard to do? Write a note of praise to that person whose triumphs make you boil over? That's a tough diagnosis, doc, and an even tougher prescription. But notice how it turns out:

"Each and every time I have made this recommendation," Dr. Schlessinger writes, "the caller expressed immediate relief from the ugly burden they'd been carrying, as well as a more positive feeling. In contemplating the good deed, their minds returned to good thoughts. Not only do good thoughts usually result in good deeds, good thoughts can resurrect good thinking."

We've been trying, each day, to put just one concept on the radio cutting board here for our consideration. Here's the one for today: Determine not to nurse your hurt.
When we nurse a grudge, what is our mind filled with? Bad thoughts, of course. We rehearse and practice the angry things we'd like to say; we mentally fondle the image of that enemy getting their comeuppance. We enshrine the moment when they're defrocked, stripped of their ill-gotten glories, laid bare for the hollow jerk we know they really are. In our minds, we play with that scene, play with it, play with it. Negative thoughts, spinning around, piling on top of each other, growing from a molehill into a mountain that dwarfs Everest in its shadow. But notice this sound observation by Dr. Laura: A good deed gets your mind to return to good thoughts. What we want upstairs is good thoughts, not negative ones. We want to give that nurse her pink slip, tell her that her services are no longer required.
The great Christian writer, C. S. Lewis, spent many long years corresponding with an American woman he never once met. Despite his busy schedule, he took time to write to her, answering her spiritual questions, counseling her about temptations and grievances that were invading her soul. And she must have been a rather petty, cranky person . . . because his replies, published after his death in a book, often deal with this issue of nursing grudges. Apparently "Mary" must have had a real enemy lurking in her life. And I want you to notice the diagnosis Dr. Lewis, or "Jack," as he signed these more than 100 letters, shares:

"I mustn't encourage you to go on thinking about her," he writes. "That, after all, is almost the greatest evil nasty people can do us - to become an obsession, to haunt our minds."

And now listen to this, because it sounds about as wretched a prescription as Dr. Laura just wrote on her pad.

"A brief prayer for them, and then away to other subjects, is the thing, if one can only stick to it."

Friend, is this possible? Yes, Jesus prayed for His enemies . . .is it really possible that you and I would do the same? Of course, it must also be noted that Jesus endured more than we did, and He prayed for people hammering nails into His hands and feet. Can we pray for our enemy? The person we've been ranting and raving about - can we now pray for them?
And then notice this next challenge regarding that stuck record playing in our brains. "Away to other subjects." That is just about the hardest thing in the world to do. "Away to other subjects"? Because we've worn a groove toward this subject, not away from it. All roads lead to Rome - and Rome is where we've erected our magnificent altar of anger. Our mind naturally slides toward this cherished anger, not away from it. And yet this is what we're advised to do: "Away to other subjects."
Jack Lewis wrote that particular letter on March 10, 1954. Sixteen pages later in the book skips us over to June 21, 1955, more than a year later . . . and the grudge is still in ICU, getting a lot of attention. Now he writes this:

"I'm sorry about your two jealous colleagues." This next metaphor is most interesting. Notice: "I suppose the only way with thorns in the flesh (until one can get them out) is not to press on the place where they are embedded; i.e. to stop one's thoughts (firmly but gently: no good snapping at oneself, it only increases the fuss.)"

Isn't that a thought-provoking illustration? You've got this thorn embedded in your arm. Or, in this case, your mind. Most of the time it really isn't that big a deal - we studied that yesterday, our tendency to magnify it beyond reason - until you push on it. Until you think about it, and obsess about it. Then it hurts. Of course, you'd like to cut it out and toss it away, but until the time comes where you can do that, Lewis writes, just stop pressing on the spot! Stop dwelling on it! Stop nursing it! Say that quick prayer, and then force your mind away. If your mind slips back into reverse twenty seconds later, force it away again. Put some good Christian music on your CD player. Listen to the Voice of Prophecy! Read a chapter in the Bible. Sit down and make a list of all the good things Jesus has done for you, beginning with the C's and Calvary and going from there. But just keep moving away, moving away, moving away.
The scary thing is this. Friend, when we endlessly nurse a grudge, nurse it, doctor it, fuss over it, fondle it - and that mental groove toward your anger wears deeper than any possible road away from it - it can literally warp your mind until you cannot think straight. You lose all objectivity. You begin to see phantoms: wrongs and insults where none exist.
If anybody ever had a right to harbor a grudge, I suppose Martin Luther King, Jr. would be one such person. He endured a lot of hurt in his all-too-brief life and ministry. But notice what he writes in his book, Strength to Love.

"Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital energy. Hate destroys a man's sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true."

That's scary, isn't it? And you know, in studying this gift book we're sharing with you, entitled How Can I Forgive?, Vera Sinton almost makes the giving up of grudges sound harder than quitting smoking. But here's her powerful challenge, and we'll finish with this:

"Determine not to nurse your hurt. Don't wait for the other person; make the first move. When you talk to other people, speak lovingly of the person you have forgiven. If resentment creeps back into your thoughts, remind yourself that you have wiped the record clean - as God has done for you. The wound has been cleaned and stitched. It is healing. You are free."