Peeves That I Pet

     Don't get me started...don't even get me started. Okay...I've started. I have the peeves. As I have gotten older they have become more overt. This is a polite way to say I am more articulate in expressing my deep dislike of certain situations and happenings that grate me like 40-60 grit sandpaper.
   
     Well? Doesn't it bother you when someone sits on your made-up bed? Or how about when someone knows how to drive but doesn't understand how blinkers work or what a turning lane is for...or Mr. Impatient pulls out in front of you to only then drive like a fossil-head (my pet name for this style of driving).

     Here's another...using your stuff and then not return it to where they borrowed it from. Someone tells you what time to meet them and they are later than late with no explanation or invites you to dinner at their house at 6:00 and they haven't pulled any food out to cook...aaaaahhhhh!!!!! Or people that, the only thing you can depend on is their undependable- ness.

     Here's the monumental one for this peever: having things that serve a purpose and it does not work, function, or provide its service. Nothing can cause me to orbit the earth's atmosphere any more than this! When I get a product out to use it, I want it to do what is was designed to do, right at that very moment. I do not want it to stop up, freeze up, blow up, choke up, or give up. Is having the vacuum cleaner do its job 10 minutes before the guy comes to look at your ceiling because it leaked just after a new roof had just been installed too much to ask? Is it? Is it too much to ask that the new roof work? The garage door remote work, even with new batteries? The copier work, even with new ink cartridges? People work, even with strong bodies and bright minds?

     Please don't misinterpret my peeves for being hard to please, picky, and expect perfection from everyone. I think I am more frustrated because I'm not. I take and flow and give and for-give and take some more and flow some more and give some more and for-give some more and then....then...the Queen is no longer amused.

     There are days that I totally feel God's pain when He has able-bodied children that offer no help to further His cause one iota. Look how strong and brilliant we are, made like Him and yet don't function in the capacity we were created to. The depth of our ability to love, the length of our need to serve, the height of our special gifts and talents...all used for our own daily needs and for our own gratification.

     Just like my vacuum cleaner...created to suck up and remove all the debris, filth, undesirable, unneeded, useless junk from the places we live and walk in, we have like purposes to do the same for others, provide a service that benefits and enhances their lives.

     Jesus rebuked a fig tree for not fulfilling its call to produce fruit, food, nourishment to Him and his travelers. It was posing as a place to be fed but offered nothing to eat. It was not living its reason for being. I can't hide behind grace and say, "Jesus knows my heart" or "God understands how uncomfortable I get doing things I don't like". Grace is given to me so I CAN DO the thing He wants from me. Jesus noted that it would be by our fruit that we will be known. He recognized it to be a fig tree I'm sure because of its shape, size, and leaves but the thing that was important enough to document was the fact that it did not serve its purpose. It was taking up space and gave nothing in return (except for a small amount of oxygen).

     Don't ever be caught living, breathing, taking up space and offer nothing to the world around you. To feed, to nourish, to love, encourage, to give, to offer and provide THAT is our purpose. The scriptures say that David "served his generation and then slept with his fathers". Don't be like an empty building on the street corner that looks like a business is there, even has a sign out front but when you try to go in and use their service you find it is out of business and no longer provides what you needed. If you go to the cleaners, you expect cleaned clothes, when at the the gas pumps you expect gas, when at school you expect a place to learn. The same is true for God's created children, He expects us to function in the perfection that we were created to function and does not desire any malfunction in us whatsoever. I would suppose if God had a peeve this would be it, too. Like Father, like daughter!