I’ve recently had to take medication to avoid cholera when I go to India, and it struck me as I struggled to drink the sweet-tasting liquid that we tend to add flavours to drinks to make them more palatable. Those flavours are inevitably sweet, because we don’t like bitter tastes that much. ‘It’s a bitter pill to swallow’, we say of something unpleasant that must be endured.
Heb 12:14-15 says ‘Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.’ Bitterness inevitably will cause us problems. When we are bitter, holding on to grudges, refusing to forgive, we will find God’s grace to be insufficient for us. Only as we let go of these things can we have open hands to receive, and dispense, grace.
Bitterness within us takes time to grow. We have to be quick to root it out and then it’s easy to deal with. Left to put down tentacles, it will take over our life and sap spiritual vitality from us. How do we avoid it? We choose to fix our eyes on Jesus and refuse to let self-pity eat away at our peace of mind.