Have you ever walked around for several hours with a stone in your shoe? Sometimes the stone would be under your heel; then it would move under your arch. It was annoying, but not annoying enough to stop what you were doing, take off your shoe, dump out the stone and put your shoe back on. It would have taken you less that a minute, yet you persisted in enduring the annoyance. And when you finally did take it out you found it was not much larger than a grain of sand.
How much like flaws in our characters. We have little things that annoy others and ourselves, but we do not take the time and discipline to “clean house.” Little quirks of personality and unhealthy habits that could be remedied we ignore because it would be inconvenient to make the mental effort.
Improvement in self is possible if we will just make a bit of an effort. We can stop annoying others and ourselves if we will only purpose to do so. Best of all we can have help. God does say in Psalm 91:15, “…call upon me, and I will answer….”
Written by Roger Bothwell on October 12, 2000
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