Enjoy Your Own Backyard

During wheat harvest, Reuben went out into the fields and found some mandrake plants, which he brought to his mother Leah. Rachel said to Leah, "Please give me some of your son's mandrakes."But she said to her, "Wasn't it enough that you took away my husband? Will you take my son's mandrakes too?" "Very well," Rachel said, "he can sleep with you tonight in return for your son's mandrakes." Genesis 30:14-15

What started all this birth competition between Leah and Rachel, was envy. It was about looking at what another person had and wanting it. It is the grass being greener on the other side and doing everything you can to try to achieve it. It even came down to the using of herbs, the mandrake. I did an extensive search on this mysterious plant. The root resembles a person because the bottom root is separated into two and looks like human legs. It has fragrant purple flowers and leaves, that were used to line beds for the sweet fragrance it gives off and it was a way of enticing one to enter the bed and procreate. It was later used as a symbol of fertility. This root was mentioned as having an aphrodisiac tendency and made one sleepy. It is used in witchcraft. To sum it up, it is a form of witchcraft because it uses a plant as a means to a human purpose – trying to make something happen in the spiritual to become a reality in the physical. It is a good lesson to see how one can want something in life so bad that they become fixated on it and they try everything they can do make it happen. I think of women that want to get married and they try everything they can to meet “the one”. They look for love in all the wrong places, and they focus on “not having”. It is looking at the glass "half empty" rather than the glass being “half full”. Their eyes have strayed so far away from God that their focus on God has changed to a focus on themselves. I have learned that God has everyone exactly where He wants them to be and that we may not understand why, but He has a greater plan. Embrace your singleness and see the joy in it and not the negative side. Embrace where you are at – bloom where you are planted. God knows our hearts and desires, so we pray and ask, trusting that He will provide but it has to be in His time and not ours. Don’t live life always looking at the other side of the fence but enjoy your own yard. It truly is a wonderful place to be, for God has placed you there, so enjoy it. Enjoy His gift! 

Question: Are you looking at the grass on the other side of the fence and thinking it is a better place for you? Can you begin to refocus your vision as to where God has you now, and celebrate it?