“Jesus answered, ‘If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me.’” (John 21:22)

Yesterday, I got into work and immediately got hit by the amount of things due that day. That’s when I had this flashback moment to when I was just a simple engineer. Times were more straight forward, things got broke – and I fixed them. People asked for new stuff, and I designed it. Sure some things were still complicated, but the solutions were found in books and equations. Today my job deals more with people, contracts, customers and funding. There is rarely a simple yes or no answer to anything, and just about everything revolves around playing this chess game between what we can offer, what our competitors are doing, and the customer. So after a trip down memory lane (to those simpler times) I was significantly unmotivated about my list and decided to grab some coffee. With my fresh cup in hand, I passed our two maintenance guys installing a new electric outlet in the lab. They were obviously having some type of an issue getting the wire through the wall (old buildings are like that), and as I passed them the master electrician looked at me and joked, “Man, coffee that would be nice.” We both laughed a bit knowing that each of us was dealing with things we didn’t want to do, and both said in unison “The grass is always greener on the other side.” I walked away thinking to myself how quickly we convince ourselves that other people have it so much easier. Today’s verse follows Jesus’ foretelling of Peter’s death, leaving Peter to look back at John and ask, “Well what about that guy?” Jesus’ answer is the same for us today when we start to envy others “what is that to you? You must follow me.” So today we need to focus on the work given to us. And if we still think the grass is greener somewhere else, than maybe it’s just time to water the lawn 😉.