It’s not often I quote Bible verses that begin, “Cursed is the one who . . .”, but I came across one in my studies this week that’s so, so OCD-pertinent that I have to share. Hang with me, because this goes someplace good.

As I write this, it’s June here in Mesa, Arizona and I’m doing all I can to keep the trees, bushes and grass in my front yard from incinerating. Now, Arizonans know that while it is possible to select plants that do pretty well in the desert, survival is contingent on having a reliable water supply.

In my case, the only reason I’ve got trees, bushes and grass at all is because there’s a sprinkler system. It’s the valves, underground pipes, spray heads and timer I installed that make it all possible. Where the water lands, things grow. Where it doesn’t, they don’t.

And yet . . . and yet, every so often when I’m out on the sidewalk cleaning up after mowing, I’ll glance down in the gutter and there, right alongside the nuclear-hot asphalt, there’ll be a few inexplicable blades of grass poking up through a crack. I realize grass doesn’t have ears, but I’ll look at these wayward little guys and say, “Why? Why would you choose here? Can’t you see you’re doomed?”

The Old Testament prophet Jeremiah must’ve felt a little like that, I think. The nation of Israel, having wandered away from God, was also trying to thrive in a wasteland — only this one was spiritual. God had always been their source, their supply. But not now. They had gone their own way. Thus weakened, they were vulnerable. And to the east, Babylon was rising like a scalding Arizona sunrise. If they weren’t already cut off from the source, they were about to be: Judgment was coming.

That’s the heart of Jeremiah 17:5–6, which begins with that curse:

Cursed is the one who trusts in man,
who draws strength from mere flesh
and whose heart turns away from the Lord.
That person will be like a bush in the wastelands;
they will not see prosperity when it comes.
They will dwell in the parched places of the desert,
in a salt land where no one lives.

“Cursed is the one who trusts in man,” Jeremiah says — not cursed as in zapped, but cursed as in cut off. Forlorn. The person who leans on their own strength, their own strategies, their own vigilance, becomes like that desert shrub or my gutter grass — sprouted only on account of chance moisture from long ago, but now consigned to death.

If you live with OCD, you know exactly what that feels like. OCD is a mind that’s cut off. A mind trying to survive in a concrete gutter, clinging to life in a crack of self‑reliance. The OCD mind imagines that if it can just think harder, check longer, analyze deeper, or replay more thoroughly, concrete might become habitable.

Jeremiah doesn’t leave us there, though. He immediately paints the opposite picture — the one I see evidenced within the borders of my well-watered lawn. In verses 7-8, he says,

But blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord,
whose confidence is in him.
They will be like a tree planted by the water
that sends out its roots by the stream.
It does not fear when heat comes;
its leaves are always green.
It has no worries in a year of drought
and never fails to bear fruit.

Notice that both the bush and the tree go through the same weather. The heat still comes. The sky still gives no rain. But the tree doesn’t panic. It doesn’t shrivel. It doesn’t stop bearing fruit. It’s planted by an ever-renewing, constant water source — not a random one that’s here today, gone tomorrow.

We OCD folk struggle because we place our well-being in the hard, hostile concrete of self. Thus isolated, we’re alone with our self-prescribed rituals that pay off as haphazardly as the inconstant moisture that gives my gutter grass false hope.

The answer? Uproot yourself. Replant yourself. What, you didn’t know that was an option? C’mon, man — you’re not a mindless blade of grass that chose one bad spot and has to stay there until you shrivel up. Jeremiah 17 tells us the lawn is the place to be . . . and you can go there. Instead of foolishly trying to thrive where you fundamentally cannot, choose to live where you absolutely can. Choose to live where you were built to be.

“Cursed is the one” may be where we started, but “blessed is the one” is where we can elect to finish. A thought to help us choose: Where God nourishes, life flourishes; where flesh cherishes, life perishes. The homeowner has laid the landscape for success, but it only works if you remain where the water is.