Have you ever seen a beautiful meadow, perhaps full of wildflowers, and had an urge to go running through it? I love those commercials that show people walking, even sitting, in the middle of one of these beautiful places. The sun shines warmly on them, the birds wing overhead, everyone is smiling.

I saw one such meadow yesterday. Even though it is not officially spring yet, where I am nature forges ahead. Everything is growing at alarming rates - trees are budding, flowers blooming. As I passed this meadow, the wildflowers waved in the breeze, calling my name.

Question - have you ever actually walked through a landscape like this? They look so inviting…from a distance. However, once you get up close, you find looks are deceiving. Sure, it is still pretty. But what you could not see 50 yards away were the stickers, burrs, and brambles tangled under the long grass and flowers. And the bugs - oh the bugs! Things with large wings come flying at you when you near their resting places. Yes, there are pretty butterflies, too, but most of these insects are unidentifiable, winged things that fly at your face and hands, making you (meaning, me) squeal like a little girl.

Many of us often stuggle with contentment in our lives. We look at others’ lives, and wish they were ours: ‘Oh, if only I had that car’, ‘I wish my life were as organized as hers’, ‘I want for job security like his’, ‘Their family is so together’. We women can be especially bad about this, not so much wanting others’ material possessions, but always seeing other women as more successful, more together, more confident than ourselves: ‘I wish I was as good a mother as her’, ‘I wish my husband loved me like that’, ’She is the most assured person I know’.

It is always dangerous when we compare ourselves to others. I am reminded of the meadow - tempting from far away, but up close full of undisclosed imperfections. 

All lives are like that. No one’s life is perfect. We usually see the surface life of others.  Landscapes are smooth and flawless from far away. No matter how enviable someone’s life seems to be, up close they contain the same types of imperfections we all deal with - insecurity, imperfections, mistakes, wishes, unfulfilled yearnings. 

God has given us our own lives to life.  It is tempting to think our problems could be solved by simply switching lives with another person. However, even if we could do that, we would just find ourselves taking on another set of problems along with the enviable circumstances. No meadow is perfect, and no one’s life if without flaw. Imperfections do not mean that the meadow is ugly, or a person’s life is bad. The problem comes when we want, or expect perfection - the Perfect Meadow, the Perfect Life. Lives, and meadows, contain things unseen by those from a distance.

God is the maker of meadows and the maker of persons. He has given to the meadow beauty and brambles. He has given to persons triumphs and trials. The trick is to learn to see the beauty of the distant meadow even as you get closer, even as you stare the bugs and burrs in the face.