Whatever happened to being sweet

I found myself in Psalm 109 this morning which was very interesting to me with some of the things He has brought to my attention over the past month or so. At first I was a little overwhelmed at David's anger and how he lashed out and especially his requests to God in dealing with people. This is definitely a time of righteous indignation against liars and slanderers. David endured many false accusations as did Christ. David was angry at being attacked by evil people who slandered him and lied yet he remained a friend and a man of prayer. David was not taking vengeance into his own hands. He was asking God to be swift in his promised judgment of evil people.
That's where I found myself this morning...pondering all the hurt I have witnessed and heard about recently most of it done by loose lips. Hurt doesn't just come in the form of earthquakes and hurricanes. Sometimes we can recover more quickly from those things than we can from people who enjoy spreading rumors, talking about us when they have no idea what they're talking about, making judments based on their own opinion or even worse from hearing only one side of the story. Or...we just stand back and decide what we want to believe about people without knowing them at all.
I've heard it all recently from 12 year old girls to women in their 40's. Unfortunately mean girls don't always grow up after high school, they become mean women. It's hard to break those habits that we form and especially those that we enjoy and for some reason being critical and judgmental and hateful is enjoyable to some.
This is the part that really blows my mind. I'm talking about people that are in our churches, church-going, call themselves Christian people. The ones who say that they live by biblical values and pray and go to bible study. We are killing our witness. Why would the lost want anything to do with us when we wound each other and walk away? Whatever happened to going to a person that we feel has wronged us and talk to them? Isn't that what the bible tells us to do? We try every other way to deal with our problems other than the right way. WHY IS THAT? Whatever happened to being sweet. I had a staff wife tell me several years ago that that was just being fake. Well, sometimes if we would just fake sweet, we may start to feel sweet. Why is it such a girl way to be? My boys are 16 and 18 and we never deal with that with them.
This is just one of those days that I am sick and tired...
Sick and tired of ministers leaving the ministry because they can't take it anymore.
Sick and tired of teen girls' feelings being crushed and reputation ruined by loose-lip, hateful girls.
Sick and tired of families ruined because we don't love others enough to leave other people's spouse alone and try to work it out with our own. God help us every day to be real and loving. May we lavish love and mercy on others when we realize how much love and mercy we have received. How do we deal with all of this? How do we make sense of it? I received some answers from God's Word and from a great book that I turn to time and time again when I need some practical advice. That will be the next post.