I went into the cafe that helps homeless people on my local High Street today to say hello. It’s run by a team of Christians and they evangelise from time to time on the street.

I haven’t been in for a few weeks and so it was a good opportunity to catch up with people. One of them, Billy,  was somebody I’d never met before and he had a little story to tell.

Billy told us that he’d recently learned how pearls are formed within oysters. He told us that when an oyster is irritated by a grain of sand or something similar it begins to cover it over layer by layer forming a pearl as it goes. It covers the irritant and makes itself less irritated.

Billy thinks that Jesus sends irritating people your way so that you can learn to change from being irritated to being beautiful. He also thinks that when you die you have become almost perfect and will live forever with Jesus.

Irritating people make me laugh at and I feel sorry for them. They don’t make me less irritable or place a pearl of great beauty in my soul.

Perhaps I’m not as holy as Billy or perhaps I’m just more rooted in realism.