“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since. 'Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,' he told me, 'just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.”- The Great Gatsby
This quote isn’t particularly relevant, but it’s quite good regardless.
Matthew 7: 2-3 “For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?”
There's a phrase that I've found to be especially philosophically applicable throughout my short lifetime. It's one I'm sure that everyone knows and, hopefully, has found somewhat applicable. "The grass is always greener on the other side." With springtime joining us in full force, and with how much life has changed, that phrase is particularly meaningful at this moment in time.
Nearly everyone I've met who is blessed enough to have a lawn takes great pride in it. As humans we define good grass as being grass that is lush green and thick. We value uniformity and love to unleash our inner dictator on the barren soil outside of our house. Many Saturdays of my life have been spent fighting this war: mowing lawns, watering them, mowing again because it was too long today and left clumps all over, removing any rebel grass who had the audacity to grow outside of its designated spot. Like the machines we operate, this process is repeated each week until the rain threatens to rust our joints and the seasons thwart our tiny, personal plans.
It's an ironically fruitless process, I find. The rewards reaped are minimal at best and hardly worth the effort. Yet we do it anyway, because humans love having projects to work on. Also, much like our Heavenly Father, we love plants, and we love to create a crude approximation of beauty through the resources provided to us. It's a project, and one which we both love and hate, our growing grass often a direct reflection of the time and effort we put into it. That is, I think, why we find the plain, greenish hues of our domains to be so pleasing. Because we have created something where once there was nothing; it's more about the feeling of accomplishment, than anything else.
But sometimes our lawns don't look so nice. Sometimes our ambitions are impossible to fulfill and, like Icarus, grow just to burn under heat. Our water is insufficient to sustain the symbol of our internal pride. Sometimes the grass on the other side of the fence is just too green to bear and, as a response, we grow green ourselves. And that's when our ambition becomes a problem.
This event- that of human jealousy- is hardly a phenomenon. Jealousy are wild olive branches growing in our soul's garden that we plant ourselves, and one that Heavenly Father tries so hard to eliminate. He is even willing to burn them, burn us, if it will stop the spread (Jacob 5:9) Jealousy is a disease in ourselves which destroys us on the inside, as well as on the outside should we let it spread. It is what happens when we realize that our ambitions, small though they are, cannot be fulfilled by our merits alone. It is as swift as an arrow speeding towards us and strikes where and when we are not guarded by God’s armor. The adversary would have this arrow strike us and our friends to our cores and leave us lying dead in our gardens, too busy brooding about how insufficient our efforts were to notice the spiritual peril surrounding us.
There is, however, more than one form that jealousy’s stain can take. Not only is it the adversary's weapon, but it too can be a weapon that we launch at ourselves when we fail to see reality as it really is. It is a type of jealousy that I can’t stand to see, yet so frequently do in myself. For it is one thing to be jealous of what we can see, it is one thing to compare ourselves to friends and family- a tool which, when used with precautions, can inspire to dig in roots and grow up towards the Savior’s brilliant light in the sky- yet it is completely different when we begin to compare ourselves to the romanticized memories in our minds, the daily trials and pains of life cut out and forgotten. It is one thing to be jealous of that which is visible and real. It is another entirely to compare ourselves to that which is both fictitious and unattainable, to be like Jay Gatsby reaching out towards a green light, in love with a universe that was never there.
So frequently in life we have cause to shout to the heavens and ask, “why is this so hard? What changed? Why is my life so terrible all of a sudden?” What we so often ignore is that life was never easy. Sometimes I forget that. I forget that, though life is hard right now, though it’s never-ending slaughter of hope continues onwards, life was always like that. We look back at childhood days, carefree and lovely, but forget how many times we hated the limitations of being a child. We jealously look forward towards the future, hopeful of what’s to come, unaware of how much hope and potential there still is and will always be. Because hope is the thing with feathers, and it sings the tune without the words, and it never stops at all.
In the Harry Potter books, the Dursley’s are invited to an ‘All England Best Kept Lawn Competition.’ They leave in their brand new motor car, excited for the opportunity to bolster their own pomp and pride through the flattering words they expect to soon receive. They worked hard on their lawn. They watered it every day- even when water bans were in place. I wonder what happened when they arrived at the meeting place only to find that, no, there was no “All England Best Kept Lawn Competition.” I wonder how they reacted upon discovering that the world cared about their lawn precisely as much as they cared about young Harry Potter, locked in the house.
The truth of it is, it doesn’t matter to God how green our grass is, proverbially or literally. He does not care about who we’ve been or how many wild olive branches litter our lives. Rather, He cares that we’re doing everything in our power to remove their stain from our lives through our humble service. When the hour has grown too late for the work to continue, and the final branches are being grafted into God’s vineyard, we will look around at our neighbor. Maybe their grass is, or was, or will be greener on the other side. But that’s okay. Not everyone has the time or money for a big suburban lawn anyways.
They’re a luxury, more than anything else.
