the grass is always greener

A parishioner told me yesterday that I wasn't allowed to leave Foley until she was buried from this church. Realistically, JL could be 30+ years from her appointed trip to paradise. Needless to say the conversation got me wondering. As St. Paul's and I charge ahead in our second year together I have already had one church contact me about their search for a new rector, and more, I'm certain, will come; being 28, married, and breathing has certain advantages. There are minutes, hours, days, and even weeks in which the idea of being the Rector (i.e. Senior Pastor) of a church sounds nice. There are more weeks and months when the idea seems ludicrous. Still, sometimes it seems as though the grass would be greener...

And then I run across the text from Exodus for Sunday. If this isn't the extreme end of greener grass, I don't know what is. "The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. The Israelites said to them, 'If only we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.'"

If only we had died in Egypt. That would have been better than this. As crazy as it sounds the grumbling of the Israelites is not unfamilar to God. I can't help but wonder how many times in a day he hears something like it?

I once heard in a sermon that "if only we had elected John Kerry, Hurricane Katrina would have been avoided." I think she literally meant the storm and not the terrible mess of a recovery. I think we do it all the time. The grass, it seems, is greener no matter what the circumstances were and are.

But.

But God provides. God improvises. God hears our complaints, and when it accords with his will (or at least won't get in the way of it) he offers green grass in the here and now. Sure, it may not be as green as we think dying in Egypt might have been, but it is green.

Can you see the green grass where you are?