Blessed Annoyance

While every­one else is singing Blessed Assur­ance, I am think­ing to myself Blessed Annoy­ance. Noth­ing really works quite right on this planet. Blame it on Adam and Eve or the stars, but what­ever you do pay atten­tion to it. It is there for a pur­pose. Our per­cep­tions and expec­ta­tions never quite match real­ity. That is a good thing. It keeps us work­ing. To put it in Ori­en­tal terms, there is a lit­tle bit of illu­sion built into every­thing. It is like there is a Divine Pest at work that never lets things rock along too predictably.

Jesus was mur­dered for being the gad­fly. The pow­ers that were present had a good deal going until he came along. He exposed their meth­ods, motives and mad­ness. In the end, they blamed him for push­ing them into killing him. They did not want to hear what he had to say. Joy was not part of their par­a­digm. They did not want to hear about the God that cares for out­casts. They wanted to keep the sta­tus quo. It rewarded them well - then came this Jesus character.

The same thing could be said about the Old Tes­ta­ment prophets or the seers of our day - George Orwell in par­tic­u­lar. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion has become a game. Manip­u­la­tion is the accepted mode. Real­ity has become soft. The rules are changed by the minute by the ones mak­ing the rules just to keep them rul­ing. It cre­ates a mod­ern mad­ness. Every­thing changes a lit­tle bit to com­pen­sate for some­thing that makes sure the fly stays in the ointment.

Per­son­ally, I am happy about this. It shakes peo­ple out of their com­fort zones and is a mir­ror for flawed sys­tems and approaches. It also tells us how eas­ily dis­tracted we become over noth­ing. Par­ents get into fist fights over lit­tle league games. Road rage goes from the excep­tion to the norm. It all presents an oppor­tu­nity for us to detach and smile. The snake in the Gar­den of Eden is still at work. A lit­tle dis­tor­tion, a lit­tle frus­tra­tion, a lit­tle lie here or there, and you have the for­mula. It has worked for many cen­turies and con­tin­ues to annoy the unaware.

So things do not work per­fectly. So! What is the big deal? Lim­i­ta­tions stim­u­late imag­i­na­tion and cre­ate new ways of see­ing the world and deal­ing with it. Bless the annoy­ances of your life. They wake you up.