An Irritant???

Have you ever become annoyed or frustrated at something that irritates you or ruins your normal comfort and just won’t go away?

Like if a little stone gets in your shoe while you are walking … and you think, “whoa, what got in there?” But you try to keep going … then reassess, “ugh, it’s not going away; this is irritating.” You try and shake your foot around as you’re walking to get the pebble to a more innocuous spot … only to realize you’re being watched by other curious people. So, you stop and sit down; you’ve got to address the irritation and get it out. With that tiny bit of God’s creation removed, you are just so thankful for the change and the relief.

What if you couldn’t get the irritant out? What if you needed to accept the truth that the irritant would be present longterm? Neither your will nor your arms could remove it?

The Making of Pearls

An oyster is part of the mollusk family. When they sense an irritant, like a parasite or piece of grit, that has lodged in their shell, they have no arms to remove the irritant. But God has exquisitely designed them to slowly secrete layers of aragonite and conchiolin (the rainbow-like iridescent coating often called nacre) to coat the invader. In time, those secretions day after day turn an irritant into a pearl.

The oyster or mussel slowly secretes layers of aragonite and conchiolin, materials that also make up its shell, to form nacre, also known as mother-of-pearl, which encases the irritant and protects the mollusk from it.

Natural History Museum

How incredible is that?? Something that irritates and causes frustration is dealt with using a process that in time creates a pearl, a gemstone of great value. Only God!!

Irritating People

I have been musing on this concept. Could I respond like an oyster to irritating things in my life? Weather conditions, financial conditions, or health conditions that are outside my control? That’s hard!!

People can also be an enormous source of irritation or frustration in life. Perhaps you are thinking of someone right now? They may be within your immediate family, extended family, in your church, or a colleague at work. Perhaps you avoid the irritation by simply avoiding contact.

We live in South Africa, a nation with a history of apartheid (1948-1988), which could be simplistically described as state-enforced separation of people who were irritating to each other. There are eleven official languages and even more cultures here. There are many people-groups supposedly trying to live together in harmony, but the irritation breaks through far too often.

As humanity, we are very much in the same boat: God created us all in His image and likeness, and we are all fallen, sinful, and broken. Similarly, the Bible is for all people groups. It transcends eras, cultures, and individual preferences. And the two-fold Great Commandment, woven throughout its pages, is to love God supremely and your neighbor (created in His image) as yourself.

Nacre of the Spirit

Could we respond like the oyster when irritations occur? What if we did our own “nacre” around irritating challenges? If we have idols in our heart where we love control, love comfort, and love people-pleasing, then we will not respond well to irritants or irritating people. Idols create a “no-nacre zone.”

Loving someone means either overlooking their faults, praying and searching for subtle ways to help them work on their faults, or committing to help make up the difference where their faults may cause a problem. Loving someone is using my own Spirit-enabled internal resources (nacre) to absorb their oddities, prickles, and dysfunctions, and not let them irritate me. I stay when I could walk away. Love is accommodating someone’s weakness while you are thankful for, and celebrate, what is good. This applies to relatives. This applies to orphans. This applies to witchdoctors. This applies to people in other political parties.

Here is a for instance. In your office you need to closely monitor a coworker from a very different culture … different morals, a different work ethic, and different views of authority. They look different and they value things that are totally out of your orbit. Irritants abound!

BUT….. there are some very beautiful things about them as well. What if you choose to search for ways to think thanks to God even for them? You might express one thing that you are thankful for in them each day.

• You could express your thankfulness for them in prayer to God (as you also ask God to fix them … and fix your heart so that you can show selfless love to them)
• You could write your thankfulness in your th(i)nkful journal, or even better …
• You could express your thankfulness to the coworker for something you have noticed in them!

When we choose to meditate and express our thanks for those beautiful things, it is like applying nacre in the making of the pearl. Perhaps I need to get into the pearl-making business! May I learn to put th(i)nkful nacre around my irritants, especially humans that God has put in my life for a purpose. I could become very rich with all my pearls!