Our chapter today is about people who irritate us. Now I’m not going to call you out in my email today as you already know who you are. J Just kidding…..but we all have folks like that in our lives. We love them deeply but they just drive us crazy – continually rub us the wrong way. We are related to some of them, maybe married to that person, maybe they are the fruit of our loins (how’s that for a fancy way to say kids and no it didn’t say fruit of the loom). Sandpaper is really necessary. You know what happens without it – we get slivers and then it festers and gets infected and all can be avoided if we use some sandpaper and take the rough edges off first. God allows some sandpaper in our lives to help get us ready for the tasks He has for us to do. Eph 2:10 tells us that we “are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works”. Note it doesn’t say we were created to sit on the sidelines and watch others do good works. We are created to be in the game. But God has to craft us to get us ready to really perform and thus come the sandpaper people in our lives. Rather than see them as irritations or unnecessary – we need to see them as God’s tool to move us toward perfection. We all have rough edges that need to go.
The chapter identifies a few types of people in our lives that may irritate us (but be needed):
1. Measuring tape – always letting you know when you don’t quite cut it
2. Hammer – push their agenda and force their way
3. Knife – really good at cutting people down
4. Vise Grips – just won’t let go
5. Grinders – explosive personalities just waiting to go off and send sparks flying
6. Mowers – cut a wide swath tearing down plans of others
7. Hatchets – small chops but hold on to the past forever
8. Putty – no consistency or backbone
So why are there so many irritating people in my life? God makes us all unique. We can chose to focus on each other’s flaws and faults, or we can see it from God’s perspective and realize that He created each of us uniquely to fit together in the same toolbox. Yes we get sawdust in our eye from others, but as scripture says we need to worry about the “log in our own eye” before trying to take the spec out of another. We need each other. There are days we will wonder and doubt that. But we do and we are created to be God’s tool to help each other become like Jesus. Are you willing to let that happen? Are you willing to let others be the sandpaper you need to get you closer to being Jesus with skin on for those in your patch?
Posted by asorensen 
