Staring at the Greener Grass

From Flickr, Creative commons License by sean dreilinger

From Flickr, Creative commons License by sean dreilinger

What is it about the grass in the next pasture that always looks so much better to the animals?

They will risk cuts and electrical shock to get some of the grass. But are we much different as humans?

Amanda and Brooke are reading the book Sarah: Plain and Tall.  The setting is pioneer days on the prairie.  Sarah is from back east.  She loved the beach and her life back east.  She comes west to meet a man who put an ad in the paper for a bride after his wife passed.  Sarah comes out to try it for 30 days.  She ends up staying, falling in love with the man, and enjoying the life out west.  She accepted her new found life.

Let’s put Sarah in today’s culture.  Could she have found contentment staring at beach pictures and girl shopping trips to the big city each day on   Facebook?  Would our culture have her convinced that she deserves to be happy and get what she wants, rather than focus on family?  

Amanda made a wise observation:  “The grass may always be greener, but if you don’t see it, you don’t know it is so much greener.”  Social media has many advantages, but one of the worse aspects of it is our inability to detach from the social pressure it creates.  I really feel for teens in this regard!  People put their best image, truly a created image, on Facebook that shows the best of their life.  How many marriages are out there that if you judged from Facebook, you would think they are great, but they are really deeply troubled?  Let’s be real, our pictures and status updates make us look better than we are!  We go do a family photo shoot and it is filled with whining, fussing, and threats; yet somehow a few of the pictures turn out good!

We are constantly seeing what looks to be “greener grass.”  The seeds of an affair are sown, when people start looking at other men and women and thinking how much better they are than the one they have at home!  The shackles of debt are put on when we are constantly trying to have what others have, because we think everyone else has these things and are happy!

Maybe the secret is to stop looking so much!  The grass may really be greener (i.e. better than yours) but this only breeds discontent and jealousy.  Maybe instead of staring at the other grass, we should start tending our own field and responsibilities.  We may just be like Sarah and discover we may not have a beach, but we have a wonderful family on the plains.

(Many of us may literally need this post this week, when we are seeing pictures all week of our friends on the beach during Spring Break!)

“For where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice.”  (James 3:16)

 

Permanent link to this article: https://www.joshketchum.com/staring-at-the-greener-grass/