Pastor's Blog: The Grass Is Green Right Where You Are
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This week I’ve enjoyed the chance to sit down with some of my pastoral peers and participate in an annual conversation that I’ve been blessed to be a part of for over twenty years. The group is made up of Baptist pastors in congregations that are similar to one another in terms of membership, budgets, staffing, and context. Consequently, the conversation we hold involves lots of headaches and heartaches, ideas and initiatives. Not only have I been better for my time with the group, so have the congregations to whom I have returned with renewed inspiration.
In that respect, there’s something new I bring back each year. But at the same time, there’s a feeling that I return with as well: “The grass is not greener on the other side.”
The notion that somehow everyone has it better than you is not one peculiar to pastors. My guess is that everyone feels this way a time or two in life, and with good reason. It’s easy to look around and see how good other folk appear to have it, because our focus falls on the things we find most appealing. We don’t know about or we either ignore the “brownness” under the surface where those persons are dealing with the same types of struggles and challenges as we. That’s why while I don’t revel in other colleagues’ misfortune, I do find a certain peace in knowing that their work isn’t always a piece of cake either and I find strength in the promise that the same God we serve is able to see us through.
Given the season of the year, we haven’t seen very much green grass lately, literally speaking. In fact, we’ve been inundated with images and commercials of places to which we ought to consider getting away so that we might know the warmth and happiness that we certainly couldn’t find right here, right now. But the truth is that as pretty as those places are made out to be, they are occupied by people with the same baggage and the same burdens that folk have everywhere. The grass is not greener there. They just have found a way to ignore the brownness and pretend it doesn’t exist.
That is an option, of course. But I think there’s a better way. Work in the place God has put you to green things up right where you are. Use the gifts and talents God has provided you to make that place a God-occupied space. Trust Jesus’ promise that he is with us always, “even to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). When you do so, it will stagger you at not only how much better your place is but how much more blessed it is because you have claimed it to be the place where you will live out your obedience.
The grass is indeed not always greener on the other side. It is green enough right where God has called you, and with His help and your faithfulness, it can become even greener.
“God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.” (2 Corinthians 8:9).