Thursday... How do we handle annoyances?

Thursday... How do we handle annoyances? And we have a lot of them, don't we? At least make out that we do by the way we act.

Well Jesus had a couple of those annoying times at least to us they would be annoying.

Matthew 14 tells of a death of a close friend of Jesus. His name was John. He had been killed by King Herod and verse 12 (NLT) says, "John's disciples came for his body and buried it. They then went and told Jesus what had happened."

Now what do you do when you hear really bad news? Well, verse 13a says, "As soon as Jesus heard the news, he left in a boat to a remote area to be alone." And that's what we do. We tell our family that we need to be alone. But what if they don't let you, how do you respond to the annoyance of someone breaking in to your alone time? What are you doing? I said, I need to be alone, is a usual response, isn't it?

I love the Bible. It picks up where we live and the annoyances of where we live. The rest of verse 13 says, "But the crowds heard where he was headed and followed on foot from many towns." Do you think Jesus was annoyed? Do you think He said to them that He had just heard some bad news and that He needed to be alone? That's how we respond too many times to our family or our friends or our neighbors. What are you doing, I need to be alone.

Verse 14 tells us what Jesus did. It says, "Jesus saw the huge crowd as he stepped from the boat, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick."

Here is another annoyance that the disciples had. Verse 15 says, "That evening the disciples came to him and said, 'This is a remote place, and it's already getting late. Send the crowds away so they can buy food for themselves.'" So how did Jesus respond at this annoyance? Verse 16, "But Jesus said, 'That isn't necessary - you feed them.'" Now that became a big annoyance to them but it also became a life-changing experience. They saw Jesus take five loaves and two fishes and feed over 5,000 people and they had twelve baskets of leftovers.

How does Jesus handle annoyances? He handles them with love and sees them as opportunities to show His love.

What if we would take the annoyances in our families, our friends, our neighbors as opportunities to show our love? It would change their lives and our lives too. Now that is how Jesus handled annoyances. Yes, yes! #todaysbeginning

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