A few years ago, I met a young lady who was quietly but progressively making a fortune helping ladies enhance their beauty by the care of their skin and customized make-up. I have met many people in the beauty and fashion business, but she was different. We spent only about one hour together but her enthusiasm was infectious. She came across as someone who knew her onions and was obviously having a ball doing what she does. When I met her, she exuded such a genuine and unobtrusive “I’d love to help you out” way of invading her clients’ psyche such that if you are a woman in need of such services, only one encounter with her will bowl you over. She is a huge success at what she does.
The best cure for envy that I know of is in the discovery of what your life was created to do. That takes us back to the biblical account of creation. For every Adam, there is an Eden.
The word ‘Eden’ means ‘pleasure’ or ‘delight’. It underscores a principle more than a geographical location. When God put Adam there, his job was to “dress and to keep the garden”. Another word for that is “cultivate”. Adam did not plant the garden. He met it in place. God planted the garden and placed him there. His placement in it was a discovery he made. The fulfillment of his destiny was going to depend on what he did with and in the garden.
God created you with an Eden (a destiny) attached to you. You did not create yourself. Neither could you have given yourself a purpose since purpose is found in the mind of the maker, not the product. Any product is the way it is because of what it was designed to do! However, the responsibility for its discovery is purely personal. Our refusal to pay the price of discovery is the major reason why many of us live unfulfilled lives largely full of accidental, happenstance events that mostly make us unwitting and unwilling victims of our environment and circumstances.
The difference between a garden and a bush or wild forest is that one is deliberately cultivated while the other has no defined structure or outlook. In the garden, only what the gardener plants or permits grows. In the wild, anything grows. The only form of control would be the ecological laws of nature! The beauty and structure of every garden reflect the skill and aesthetic values of the gardener.
When God wanted to settle the children of Israel, he promised them a land called ‘Canaan’. As slaves in Egypt, they spent 430 years cultivating another nation’s ‘garden’. They tilled the land, but their masters took the proceeds. They moved as their masters dictated and ate whatever the masters were gracious enough to offer. But as a Yoruba proverb puts it, the food given to a slave is not to properly nourish or satiate him but just enough to keep him fit for more hard labour! True freedom was only going to be theirs when they came to their own land and started taking responsibility for cultivating it.
While they were in transit en route Canaan, God fed them with manna in the wilderness, but He made it obvious that it was a temporary arrangement until they would get to their own land. They could neither store nor preserve manna. They had no control over the regularity and time of its manifestation because it was still not a product of their land. However, from the day they got to Canaan and ate of the produce of the land, manna stopped and responsibility for future outcomes began.
Favour for increase beyond input was all that God promised; He did not in any way remove responsibility for the input! The joy and benefits of locating and being located in your own Eden know no bounds. When you find your garden of pleasure, you only think distinction, not competition. You project and are celebrated for your uniqueness, not what you do like others. No matter how proximate two gardens are, they are never really the same. Each one is a distinct reflection of the gardener in charge of its cultivation. When you function in your garden, there is a beautiful marriage of creativity and beauty. There is structure and there is order. In your own field, your utterances carry power and authority because you have found a vocation (a calling) not just a job or profession. Functioning in your ‘garden’ guarantees the enduring flow of empowering relationships that are helpers of destiny into your life. This is what the “Eve factor” represents.
When you find your garden, you do not toil in it. You simply dress and keep it. Yet increase is guaranteed. Your life becomes furnished with provisions and sustenance as exemplified by the four riverheads in Genesis 2.
Drudgery entered the cultivation process when man fell out of purpose. Thankfully, through Christ, God has provided a way through the death and resurrection of Christ, for restoration into that purpose. A man’s salvation is questionable if it does not birth a rediscovery of purpose in his life.
Several times people have asked me how they can begin the discovery journey. It takes WORK. That is what cultivation is all about! How badly and how soon do you want to enter into your own garden and start working?
First, you must take responsibility for where you are now. Do not blame ANYONE for your predicament. Adam blamed Eve. Eve blamed the serpent and ever since, man has perfected the blame game. Kill and bury ALL the excuses that you have used to permit yourself to fail. If it’s your garden, the responsibility for its upkeep is yours. QED!
Every man’s problem is simply a reflection of his ignorance. Be cured of your persecution complex and find the garden of your own pleasure!
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If you can, get a copy of Max Lucado’s book, “CURE FOR THE COMMON LIFE”, take time off from the distracting influences around you and shut yourself in for a few days while reading it. Switch off your phone (I wonder how some of us survived before mobile phones!). Take pen and paper with you. As you read, think. Pray. Write things down. Design a roadmap to your destination. Ask yourself questions. The quality of your questions will determine the quality of your answers. What brings colour to your face? What would you do if you already had all the money in the world and you didn’t have to do anything for money? What pain of humanity do you feel? What problems do you notice in the society or community that others don’t seem to? What kind of discussions get you excited? What makes you sleep late and wake up early? What are your last thoughts before going to sleep and your first thought on waking up? Where do you usually like hanging out and why? What kind of company do you enjoy? What brings tears to your eyes? What is your most intense personal pain?… continued.
Remember, the sky is not your limit, God is!
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