Sometimes the Title is True

I started my blog in July of 2010, right before I was going to quit my job and stop, at least for awhile, working in off-price retail management.  It was also as I wrote “an attempt to take a risk and live out in faith." 

The title of my blog is Sometimes the Grass is Greener.  It is a play off of the phrase “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence”.  This means, as you know, that we naively assume that someone else’s life, someone else’s world is better than our life or situation in which we find ourselves. If only I were on the other side of the fence, or if I had what they had, then all “my trials Lord, soon be over.”

But as soon as we are on the other side and look back, there seems to be this optical illusion of sorts, and all of a sudden our former grass appears to be a sharper shade of green than we had previously thought. It becomes an exercise in futility, of coveting other people’s stuff and world and we end up living in an atmosphere of excuses, raw deals and not being content with what has been unfairly forced upon us in our little corner of the universe.

But my friends, sometimes the grass is greener.  It just is.  Not from a coveting standpoint, not from a yearning standpoint, or from non-contentment, but from an objective look at reality.  Sometimes the grass is greener.  It then gives clarity into certain situations, scenarios, and circumstances.  And now for my revelation.

It is the day after Thanksgiving, the morning after to be exact.  We are spending the holiday with my wife’s brother at his house in the city.  Not a huge city as it is only about 150,000 in population; and also it is the place where we lived before moving to the little town on the coast.

I like living on the coast.  There are many reasons for that, but the main one is pretty obvious.  We live a block from the Pacific Ocean.  So that’s pretty cool.  The town itself likes to be called a village and has 700 residents.  We have one little grocery market, used to have a gas station, but it closed recently.  There are just a few shops and one flashing yellow light

There is a lot that the town lacks when it comes to amenities.   To shop at a department store (Walmart or Fred Meyer) one has to drive twenty-five miles to the next decent small coastal town.  That also goes for the nearest hospital.  But for whatever this village doesn’t have, it does have the Pacific Ocean, so there you go.

Here I am at 7:30 in the morning, and while everybody is sleeping, I grab my coffee and step outside of my brother-in-law’s house and onto a city block.  There is some frost on the ground, trees, and cars.  There are houses to the left, houses to the right, and houses on the other side of the street.

I am watching cars drive by and as I take a few steps down the sidewalk I hear the whistle of a train, a couple of police sirens, the neighbors outside having an early morning conversation before they head out shopping.

Looking down the street, I can see the signs and lights of local businesses.  And as all of this imagery hits me full in the face, I realize I am witnessing the hustle and bustle of living.  Don’t see that much in my town.

It is interesting that most people travel to the coast and especially to the village where I live in order to get away from the city life, the rat race, the populous of people.  And that is certainly understandable.

There is a calm, a slowness of everyday experience at the coast.  The long walks on the beach, the reading of a good book relaxing on an Adirondack, and even running to the little marker for some last minute groceries.  At our market the selection is easy.  You either buy the item or you don’t.  There is no deciding between like products, it is this one or nothing. Then there is the stroll to the only ice cream shop for a double scoop of Tillamook’s finest and then a slow jaunt to wherever or nowhere.  Ah, this is the life.

But, the city, as I absorb all of it at once, I miss it.  And it is because of the people.  Not necessarily the people that I know.  It’s just the people.  And every time that I see someone, I am reminded of how much my God loves them.  I don’t know them, and I have never seen them before, and I may never see them again, but I see their need, I see their loneliness, I see their poor decisions that have beaten them to the ground.  I see the resigned unhappiness that is their life, and I hold in my heart and head the answer, the solution, the cure.  Jesus.

There are people in need everywhere.  I know that.  Whether it is in my town of 700 or in his city of 150,000 people have the same ache.  It is just more pronounced in a larger city where anonymity is the rule and not the exception.  In a small town, everybody knows you and your business, whether you wish them to or not.

Dwight Moody, the great evangelist, when he felt the need to go to London to present the gospel was asked this, “Why go there when there is need here?”  His reply was, “I go where I can do the most good.  That is what I am after.  It is souls I want – it is souls I want.”  Why did he want to go to London?  That was where the people were.

Sometimes the grass is greener.