Little Lesson: The Grass Is Always Greener

I just finished a really great book from a debut novelist, Katie Ganshert, called "Wildflowers From Winter".  Katie is asking her blog followers to write a story about how God has used a difficult situation in their lives to bring about good, to bring about those "Wildflowers From Winter". If you would like to know more about her book, you can read and rate my Blogging For Books review of "Wildflowers From Winter" at:  http://waterbrookmultnomah.com/bloggingforbooks/reviews/view/17131

You can visit Katie's book page at http://katieganshert.com/books/wildflowers-from-winter/


This is a reprint of a Little Lesson I wrote almost two years ago:

"The Grass Is Always Greener...Life Lessons from the Dog"

Shadow is on the back porch whining and looking at me with imploring eyes. He's on the porch because it's pouring, and I didn't want him to be soaked all day out in the yard. Still, he pulls at the chain and stands in the rain pining for his doghouse in the puddle. It would be amusing if I didn't see myself in his pining eyes. The many times God has moved me to higher ground, to a place where I'd be safe and warm and dry, only to have me pulling against the chain. Send me back to that muddy puddle, it's familiar ground. I know I'll be wet, but hey, I've been that way before and I can deal with it. This new turf you've put me on, well it doesn't feel like home, so thanks, but just send me back over there to muddle in my puddle and I'll be happy.
This is nothing new for us as humans is it? Always looking for comfortable ground, never really seeing the rain as a good thing, but instead looking for a way to return to that former "dry ground"?

I am constantly drawn back in time where I spend a few moments walking with the Israelites in the desert. I try to picture myself with them, a slave, playing in the mud on a daily basis making bricks. God freed them, and took them to new ground, but they saw that desert through human eyes. Suffering, heat, lack of food and water. What they couldn't see was God in their midst. Not even with a parting of the sea, pillars of cloud and of fire, manna, water from rocks. Exodus 16:3 "The Israelites said to them, If only we had died by the LORD's hand in Egypt. There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death."  They pined for their doghouses in the muddy puddle.

So, where are you today? Where am I? Will I accept the situation God has placed me in and know that His ways are higher than mine? Will I recognize that He's moved me to someplace better, whether I understand it or not? Will I "dwell in the shelter of the Most High and rest in the shadow of the Almighty? Will I say of the Lord "He is my refuge and my fortress. My God, in whom I trust?" Will you? Or will you continue to strain at the chain, focused on the past instead of trusting that the "porch" you're on might just be for your own good?

Psalms 91:1, 2 NIV paraphrased
Read the whole psalm and make it your own today :)  

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