Overlooking Annoyance

"A fool shows his annoyance at once, but a prudent man overlooks an insult." Proverbs 12:16

Why is it, that Proverbs can so quickly cut to the chase and identify a flaw or attribute so quickly, and often both? I think because it is by definition a Book of Wisdom is the main reason. That, and the fact that the Holy Spirit uses truth to help us see the light.

Do we really overlook as many insults as we would like to say we do, or are we annoyed far more often as we would like to admit? I am not so sure that we put up with as much as we think we do, and that we really are more easily annoyed than we even realize. Perhaps it is the high expectation, low personal responsibility culture that we live in that feeds our misconceptions. For me, I seem to be doing quite a bit of both these days. On the one hand, I am extremely patient and understanding and sensitive to the reasons behind rudeness, crudeness and even insulting talk. Ask around about me and my reputation about my "high road" of how to respond to people who repeatedly take the "low road". On the other hand, I can be overly touchy at times and cryptic, sardonic or sudden, which can make my "high road" look more like a "high and mighty road". I usually can be clever and cautious enough to keep this under control, but there are a few matters that annoy me to the point of me responding foolishly.

Read the proverb again, and you can catch my correlative drift here. If you are hyper-sensitive often and every day, or even every week you find yourself being annoyed or hurt by every cryptic or off-handed thing said to you, that is foolish. How wise it is to be just a little appropriately thick-skinned? We can be thick-skinned without being thick-headed, right? I think so. This proverb says two things. It is wise to just let go of lots of the insulting stuff we hear, and conversely, it is foolish to be so easily annoyed. Try to remember this before you use your car horn the next time. Or, maybe with an employee that is just trying to do their job. Even if it is poorly.

Can you be annoyed without being insulting? Whether you are annoying or insulting, or perhaps annoyed and insulted by annoying and insulting types; work on overlooking a few things, including some of your own self-loathing. There are lessons for everybody here, hope you get yours, I got mine.

With His Love and Mine,
Pastor Fred

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