We hit three red lights when we're late. We burn our toast. Our podcast doesn't download. It starts raining as soon as we step outside – and stops raining the moment we're inside.
Is your blood boiling yet?
Just reading these instances tenses me up, as if I can feel the frustration poking me with a stick, provoking me. There are a lot of opportunities for us to get frustrated every day, so many ordinary, potentially angering circumstances.
But frustration is not an uncontrolled impulse. We don't have to get mad when we burn our toast or hit red lights. We don't have to find life so frustrating. Still, we do, because persistent sin lurks in our hearts.
So how do we stop it? How do we find contentment instead of frustration? Joy instead of disappointment? Cheerfulness instead of anger?
I think the main reason we get frustrated is that we believe we deserve life to go our way. We deserve golden brown toast and sunny skies. We deserve smooth, uncomplicated, perfect life.
What a terrible lie. What a frightening deception. Our frustration actually proves the opposite – we deserve death. We deserve Hell. We deserve wrath and punishment, because every day we do ugly, evil things. We are sinners.
But there is good news. We are no longer under the power of sin. Jesus saved us from wrath and death and punishment. He took our place. Now we have freedom and life. But that doesn't mean we deserve that. Those gifts were unmerited.
We don't deserve this salvation, this life, this day, this breath, let alone golden brown toast.
So I say this to myself first: when you get frustrated next, stop for a moment and think about what you deserve – what you really deserve. And then thank God that you don't get that.
That is how to avoid frustration.