There once was a picky princess bothered by a single pea buried beneath a whole stack of mattresses. She was so irked by the single solid seed that she could not sleep through the night. Mind you, that was, apparently, a good thing. Only a true princess would have such delicate skin that a single pea nestled way down below twenty mattresses could bother her. Personally I think she was just way too delicate to be practical, but it’s a fairy-tale and fairy-tales aren’t realistic, so in this case she wasn’t picky, she was perfect. The perfect pea poked princess for the perfect proud prince. Huzzah and Hooray for a happily concluded fairy tale.
While we don’t deal too much with fairy princes and their pretty female equivalents today there is a kernel of truth buried beneath the layers of fantasy in the Princess and the Pea. One single irritating pea hidden in a pile of mattresses, a single pebble caught in a shoe, one lonely irritating person amidst a crowd of nameless faces, a unique painful event in an otherwise uneventful life can cause untold discomfort and misery. We understand the princess’s plight because we know what it’s like to have something apparently wee and insignificant bug us to no end.
One thing always bothers me about the Princess and the Pea: she did nothing to alleviate her complaint. I’ve never had a pea under the mattress but I have had sand in a sleeping bag when camping. (OK, those of you who know me very well can stop laughing now; I have, on occasion, camped and enjoyed it.) When you have sand in a sleeping bag the simple solution is to go outside, open it up and shake out the offending material. Problem solved. I don’t understand why the Princess couldn’t have gotten out of bed for a minute and looked for the offending item. I guess real Princesses don’t do beds; they just complain about them next morning.
Real people, however, need to do something about the irritants in their life. If not they can rub us raw to the point of being totally ineffective. It’s not always easy dealing with those problem folks, but it’s always worth it. It’s not even true to say that such folks are necessarily irritating. Just because we have a difference of opinion and it bugs us doesn’t mean that the other person is bad or even wrong. It’s up to us to figure out what really bothers us and then deal with the issue appropriately.
Every once in a while Jesus encountered folks that bothered Him. Some were outright hostile; some were so confused about their own lives, they were hurting themselves. Whatever the cause of the bother, Jesus simply told the truth about who he was and offered that truth as the solution to the issue. Some took His truth and were healed while others stayed irritating. Either way, Jesus dealt with the issue in love and no matter what the outcome, continued to love them. There’s a lesson there for us. We might not get rid of all the situations or folks that irritate us. But when we deal with them in love we can at least rest a little more easily knowing we tried.
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