"The Princess Test"

The other day I was thinking about a fairy tale that I had heard when I was a little girl- you may remember it- “The Princess and the Pea”. I call it, “The Princess Test”. You know the story, a prince wanted to get married but he had to marry a princess- a “real” princess, not a “wanna be”. One day a princess came to the castle but she didn’t look like a princess. They devised a test to determine whether she was a real princess or not. They invited her to spend the night, but the bed she was to sleep on had twenty mattresses on it. Unbeknownst to the girl the queen had placed a tiny little pea beneath the bottom mattress. In the morning, she was asked how she slept. She said she had a terrible night because something hard was in the bed and she was black and blue from lying on it. They knew she was a real princess because only a real princess could be as sensitive as that. So she and the prince were married and lived happily ever after.

I am a princess- a “real” one- because I’m the daughter of a King (our Heavenly King). And I began to wonder just how sensitive I am to even “little” sins. Do they “irritate” my spirit? Are they so much a part of my life that I don’t even notice them? Or do they make me uncomfortable? Does that unkind word, that thoughtless act, that angry thought, that “evil eye” look or that harsh word I speak even bother me? They should, but if they don’t… I failed the “princess test”… and I have to keep working on it until they do.