By Chris WittsSunday 5 Feb 2023Morning Devotions with Chris WittsFaithReading Time: 1 minute
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Transcript:
The teacher asked the kids one day in school if they knew the difference between Mother’s Day and Father’s Day. And the little boy raised his hand. “Sir, she he said, well, they are just about the same, you know, except you don’t have to spend as much money for your dad’s present.”
(Men And Their Emotions: Part 1)
In a very quiet and simple way. The little boy pointed to a simple fact. Men and women are different. And if you join me yesterday, you would have heard me talk about that fact. God made us this way for a reason.
Of course, it can have its moments. Like the triple O operator who received this frantic call, he was shouting down the phone. My wife is trying to have a baby, and the contractions are two minutes apart. Now. The operator thought that she was being helpful, and so she said, “Well, is this her first child?” “No, you idiot,” he said, “This is her husband,”
Men and women. Yes, men do think differently, right? The author says. Men snore. More, fight more, change their minds more often than women do their blood is redder. They feel pain less than women. They talk about themselves less but worry about themselves more so. It’s no surprise that Dr James Dobson says that the seat of emotions in a man’s brain is actually wired differently than in a woman’s. For example, let me tell you men use about 5000 words in one day, while women use 20,000 words. And most men learn to control their emotions, to be self-reliant and work hard and to never quit and to achieve high performance. So that’s my theme. Men and their emotions. Women tend to be more emotionally open than us guys. Even more comfortable, I guess, about emotions.
But that’s not to say that men don’t have real emotional needs. It’s just harder for us guys to express them.
So what happens? I think the truth is we hide our emotions. Uh, we like Superman that we are men of steel, always in control, and he likes the idea that real men don’t cry. How many real men does it take to change a lightbulb? None. Because real men are not afraid of the dark.
That tongue in cheek expression I guess, says it all. Most of us or some I should say our emotional, very emotional can be moved by things that we see or hear. For example, in the Bible we read of King Solomon, who wrote to his wife in the book in the Old Testament, called The Song of Songs. And he said, “This your love is more delightful than wine.”
Now he wasn’t afraid to express his feelings or deep love for her. I I read about something that happened in 1996 a man called Dr Scott Beck. He was an amateur, is an amateur climber, but was caught on Mount Everest. This, of course, is the world’s tallest mountain. One day of violent storm hit him and other climbers, and eight of them tragically died in that horrible day. But Scott Beck lay unconscious for a time, and he woke up.
He was nearly blind. He climbed back down with severe frostbite. His nose actually had to be reconstructed. He needed a new hand, but you know what kept him going? It was the memory of his wife and Children, and he described how he just wanted to hold them in his arms again, and that strong emotional need was all that he had to keep him going. Dr. Viktor Frankl told about his time in the concentration camp. In the Second World War, men were treated just so terrible, he said. If we could only see our wives, I hope that there are better off in their camps, and it’s probably better.
He used to say they don’t know what’s happening, but they used to think of their wife and his wife died under the hands of the Nazis. He survived, and one in 28 prisoners only survived. And, he said one of the themes was that the thought of reuniting with their wives kept them going through the horrifying pain, of days of pain and grief. So men need the love of their wives. Men as I said, I have emotional needs. But there can be no transforming of darkness into light and apathy into movement without emotion.
Let’s Pray
Thank you, dear Lord, that we have that sense of need and emotion. Thank you for that. And bless us I pray, Amen.