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From Jim Harris, Art Historian:

Ìý

Morning, Chris. Let me start by saying that I’m very happy to be here.Ìý Happy to be out of the house, glad it’s Monday. Part of this, obviously, is that I love my work, my colleagues, my students.Ìý But it’s also something else.

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You see, it has emerged, over the past couple of days, that my responses to conflict and discord in the home may not, in fact, be impartial, balanced, just and fair, as I believed, and that, from time to time, I may actually be partial, unbalanced, unjust and unfair.

Here’s the thing.

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There’s a rule in our house, established by me, that if rubbish is left in the sitting room overnight then the PS4, beloved by my boys, is removed the next day.Ìý So on Friday morning, faced by Thursday’s detritus, I removed it.Ìý And hid it in the cellar.

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‘Harsh’, I hear you say.Ìý And harsh said the family, telling me by the magic of text that a) I was being unreasonable b) they’d found the PS4 anyway and c) I was being unreasonable.

I found this unreasonable.Ìý Surely I should protect our delicate family ecosystem with a domestic code of conduct?Ìý No, I was told.Ìý Get things in proportion.

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So I tried, but I failed and found myself taking refuge in the idea that God himself could be pretty stern with evildoers. Over the course of the weekend, however, I found myself confronted by a very different God.Ìý He was there in my prayers, forgiving me my trespasses. He was there in the measured response of the family to my Friday tantrum.

And he was there in the bible, where time and again I saw that the Lord is a) abounding in steadfast love, b) gracious and merciful and c) slow to anger.

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Slow to anger.Ìý Exactly what I am not but exactly what I need to be, because in my fast anger is consumed all the love, grace and mercy required not only for my own contentment but also the shared contentment of everyone around me. So this week, I’m back to attempting one of the basic lessons of civilised human behaviour: counting to ten before I respond.Ìý I will find it hard.Ìý But I reckon I’d rather start the week focused on that than consumed by whether there’s a crisp bag in the sitting room.