Annoying ...

Today I was in a grocery store, I had a few items and saw that there was an express checkout line for 6 items or less. I got in line quickly (as all the other lines were very long and those people had a lot more than 6 items in their carts), then I counted my items and to my relief I had exactly 6. I noticed a person in front of me that had many more than 6 items. At about this same time another person got in line behind me and noticing the person in front of me commented about how many items were in their cart. Then this person proceeded to tell the person that they shouldn't be in this line with that many items. Seconds later the person with the excess items (understand this cart had to have at least 20 items in it) seemed to suddenly realize how many items were in the cart and said "What am I thinking, I have more than 20 items." This person then moved to another checkout, a non-express line.

This got me thinking about annoying things people seem to often do, at times I think they do them just to annoy me. Do you know what I mean? How could you, you don't know what annoys me?

Meanwhile I proudly stood in line with my 6 items. I am pretty sure those around me were secretly admiring me for being in the correct line, they were just to shy to speak up and compliment me. Then this got me to thinking about whether God ever gets annoyed with our actions. That didn't take long to consider, I am sure he does. So what annoys God? I am fairly sure that the incorrect number of items in a grocery cart are not in his top 100.

I wondered if I every do anything to annoy anyone. If you only know me through these blog posts then let me assure you that I wouldn't annoy you. If you actually know me but no longer live where you come into consistent contact with me then I assume that I may on the rarest of occasions annoy you, but it could be your fault. Have you ever considered that? If you live near enough to have regular contact with me then just ignore this post and don't answer this question.

Back to what annoys God. Wow, that really made me pause to consider that I could get so easily annoyed by a few too many items in a grocery cart (at least 14 too many!!!)when there are so many things that are so much bigger that should have my attention. God, I am sorry for annoying you at times, er... sometimes, okay nearly everyday, help me to stay focused on what matters most. Help me to not get so hung up on the little things that so often annoy me, and steal my time and attention from what matters most. (But there were at least 20 items in the cart in a line for people with no more than 6!!! This may be harder than I thought.)