I didn’t know that traffic on the Indiana Turnpike ever slowed to a stop.  I had the van pointed east in park, sitting, inching, waiting.  My son is twitching and rocking.  We had just passed a sign that said it was a mere two miles until he could pee, and then we reached the long line of stopped vehicles.

Phone rings.  My wife.  Drawing deep breaths, a whine, “Someone’s been in our house.  I just called the cops.”

It hadn’t been the best vacation.  There was a head lice incident.   There was not enough time for the people I wanted to see.  Temperatures were in the nineties; humidity between seventy and ninety percent.  Heat index over one hundred.  There were days of fishing, not much catching.  My three children were subject to only their father for nine whole days.  We had the dogs.  The dogs.

And then we were robbed.  I’ve had my car broken into a few times, never the house.  Never while I was sitting in a forever line of semi trucks in Indiana.

My son is listening to our conversation.  He is exhaling hard, making a hissing sound, the rocking has stopped.  Wife is telling me what has been moved, lots of things.  The only thing missing is my son’s laptop, a used Apple he bought with birthday money and some sweat.  He is staring straight ahead eavesdropping, whispering, “Why my computer?”

My friend Clint the Therapist told me that anger is a surface emotion.  He said that anger is like an iceberg; you can see 10% of it, but the real causes of what you see are below the surface.  I began my Lenten journey through the prophets yesterday.  Their God is very angry.

I’m accustomed to this kind of God.  He is drawn as a figure so holy it’s as if he has no choice but to demonstrate his wrath.  Fear is his method for inspiring worship and faithfulness, because he knows what you did, and you better make things right between you and him before the sun sets, lest you die in your sleep and receive the punishment you deserve. Jonathan Edwards still plays well.  “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” in many ways, is the sermon upon which American Christianity was founded.

God is holy.

I am not.

I get that.  It makes sense.  Perhaps he is wrathful with a purpose.  Okay, that fits into most theological frameworks.  But what if anger is a surface emotion for God too?

Remember the olden days, when your friend got that sweet dual cassette player that offered high-speed dubbing? That device meant you could grab all of your buddies’ music and copy it onto 90 minute blank cassettes with noise reduction technology.  You and your friends stole music like nobody’s business.  No one cared.

FFWD a couple years to a time when Napster became the dual-cassette deck of the world