Withering Grass

 

The grass is growing now its Spring. I can see it from my window living in an inner city area. The climate in England is kind to grass. The grass likes it here. Grass grows practically everywhere and it always behaves in the same way. It springs up, it may flower, and then it fades away. I don't think there can be any contention about that. It is a matter of fact. How matter of fact the Bible is when it makes that very point about humanity, about us. It makes it with a remarkable economy of expression. A Jewish prophet writing thousands of years ago said paraphrased:

" The voice told me to cry out and I asked the voice what I should be saying and the voice told me to say:

All flesh is grass, and all the best things about it are like the flower you get from grass, the grass withers and the flower fades away but God's word will last forever ." Isaiah 40 v6-8

That is the description of each one of us who are born into this world. We are described as flesh and we are just like grass. No we are not green. The word "grass" in the Hebrew, the original language of this part of the Bible, means simply 'a green thing'. When it is alive and flourishing, at its best it is green, suggesting that all the life forces that sustain it are operational, then it comes to its peak and flowers to make new seed for more grass, (at the height of its existence) and then it degenerates into fading, followed by decay and falling away, which is a rather polite way of saying that it dies. We often say someone has passed away when they have died. 'He or she is dead', has a certain unpleasant finality about it.

There is a most surprising thing about this statement that Isaiah was told to shout out. The Voice who told him to cry wanted to speak 'comfortably to his people and tell them that their warfare had been accomplished'. You may say that this statement does not appear comfortable. You are not comforting someone by telling them the obvious i.e. they are just like the grass, transient, feeble, frail, fading and dying. Words beginning with the letter " F " adequately describe our humanity: Faulty, Feeding,

Frail and feeble, Fertilising , Flowering, Fading flower...., Finished !

So how can this be a comforting thing !

These F's that describe us are rather matter of fact are they not ? Optimists will tell us that it is negative to look at humanity and ourselves in this way. Thus they suggest a better set of " F's ", in an attempt to correct the pessimists:

Fixed

Feeding on fine feelings

Flirting, fertilising, fertilising..

Fantastic fun....,

Forever - all for me !

It is clear that there are many alternatives in this life but in the final analysis we must get back to the grass roots matter of fact realities. We are certainly not fixed, we are definitely faulty by nature. The Bible describes this as the condition of being 'sinful' or 'corrupt'. We are not faulty in the sense that we were not made properly from the outset - like a car with a bad set of brakes from the production line. We are not dead like a car off the production line because we are not cars, we are living rational, relational beings. We do have the ability to choose and we can (even in our depraved and faulty condition) tell the difference between right and wrong, good and evil. In every society there is some notion of what is right and wrong e.g. It's not good to kill the next person; don't take the next person's property or the next person' partner; I want to hear to truth from you not the lie, etc.

We like to think of ourselves here in the West as having developed notions of right and wrong and some people spend ages getting lost in the grey areas. These are called 'academics' and 'intellectuals' but they are should in reality be called 'dodgers' .

A person who does not understand that he or she is just like the grass is a dodger, a sandy ostrich, living in fairy land. How can we be blind to these things? They seem so obvious from our every day experience that it is a mystery rather than the norm that everyone in this world does not cry as did the Psalmist,

'Lord make me to know mine end, and the measure of my days, what it is that I may know how frail I am' Psalm 39 v 4.

It seems that we are by nature dodgers from reality. Why are we like this? Well we are on the run from God. Since our first parents disobeyed the God of heaven, the kindest parent they ever had, and listened to the lie of the Evil one, Satan, all mankind has been on the run from God. This leads us to another strange contradiction in every one of our hearts. Why run away from someone who is seeking to save and help you? Think of the ridiculous and tragic situation of a child who runs away from loving parents to take up with drug addicts to push and use drugs. You know even a parent who has made a filthy living from drugs does not wish that upon his own child. Which parent would not be hurt by this strange reaction from their nearest and dearest?. The more loving that parent is the more painful this terrible reaction would be.

This is what we have done to God. That is why God tells the prophet Isaiah to cry. God wants to remind us of the facts. We need the facts before we can get the comforts of having our faulty lives fixed by God's gracious love. We need forgiveness from the One we have wronged. We need to come back like that wandering child and say :

"Father I have sinned against heaven and against you and am no more worthy to be your daughter or son"

We need to be very, very conscious and mindful of the fact that we are just like grass before we can begin to appreciate our need. The self confidence of a turf of grass cannot stop the ageing and dying process or the deceit or lying of the heart and tongue. Pride will not deal with our burning hate and replace it with heavenly peace. Lust or desire for pleasures many of which can only bring pain, hurt and regret to ourselves and others will not restore the fading flower of our brief lives. Only true regret and sorrow for our faulty natures can do that and complete reliance and trust in the God who created us.

So why aren't we all falling down like the Ninevites of old and pleading for a changed heart and a new life?

Well we know that we just don't want to admit that we are as transient and frail as the grass that withers and dies away. We are unnatural children, without natural love and affection for the One who gave us life, breath and hope. Many of us can see the need to have affection for those closest and dearest to us but when it comes to loving God, we find many objections arising in our thoughts and feelings. Suddenly, we become defensive, mean, irrational and unreasonable. We want to be left alone to live out our grassy existence. Suddenly, living the life of the withering turf seems preferable. We begin to think of the flower of our life and skip the part about that withering away and dying.

Neither the grass nor the flower is permanent. The flower is the best part this life can offer us. It is all the things we enjoy about life. But they are not lasting. Only the one who made it possible for the grass to grow and the flower to bud is. That is why fresh grass continues to replace dead grass and new flowers replace decayed flowers - because He, the Creator of the ends of the Earth is. He never dies although His Son died once for humanity, for you. Death struggled to hold Him and on the third day very early in the morning, those who went to seek a dead Jesus were told, 'He is not here He is risen!'

That is what this Easter is about - not the chocolates, not even the rest - mere fading flowers of life. Another man of God, a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ named James, described the rich man as the flower of the grass that will pass away. There is no comfort in earthy riches either. So, what's the National Lottery about and the tempting offers? Don't you see it's just another one of life's great cons'. Why waste your desire and hopes on the extremely low probability of suddenly hitting it rich, when even if you do it's going to fade away?

Some say, 'But what a way to fade. What a way to fade, eh. Hitting it rich is the best thing I can do! If I am gonna go, I am going to do it in style. I am going to go out with a bang!'

Unfortunately, this is a true statement. You will indeed go out with a bang when death finally shatters your frail life - living for this world's pleasures only and not being rich toward God. It is a sad truth that men and women in these last days are lovers of pleasures more than they are lovers of God. I ask you again to exercise your sense of right and wrong even from your faulty grass-like state. How would you view your nearest and dearest selling you out for some pleasure? Just imagine again, your son or daughter for whom you have sacrificed deciding to disown you in front of their friends, denying your very existence. Just imagine your parent or your partner or friend rejecting you in this way, and then to add insult to injury, curse you to your face when you have shown them nothing but love and concern. Deep down you have loved them and cared for them. You would have done anything for them and now they do this to you.

Tell me, who in the world would not have injured feelings over such a matter. You know within your own consciences that this is true about you and God!

Why do you reject His love when he has given you life and breath and the hope of eternal life with Him? Why do you blame God because things did not go right in your life or how your feeble thoughts think they should? You did not consider that your own faulty and fallible nature brought these things upon you and the faulty and fallible natures of others. Not God. All day long God has stretched out His loving hand to this rebellious people but they would not give him so much as a look in. They would not take time to consider that they are like the grass that withers away.

God has stretched out His amazing hand of love, He has pleaded and called to humanity, to us. In the person of Jesus of Nazareth - God in the flesh, He has visited mankind with His exemplary pure and holy life. Jesus has stretched out his hands to both ends of the earth in innocently suffering and dying for sins - the Lamb of God. He has given those before Him hope of forgiveness and a new and radical beginning but we have offered Him in return the acidity of our rejection. How can withering grass do that and not be cut down and cast forever into the furnace of His ultimate rejection?

God wants to remind us that we are like grass so that we can be finally cleansed, changed, forgiven and comforted. He is speaking comfortably to us here, now while we grow as the grass. That is why the gospel of Jesus Christ is bringing Good News, comfortable and peaceful news. However be warned, make no mistake, the rejection of this intended good news will spell for us ultimately and consequentially, everlastingly bad news.

Another of the disciples of Jesus, Peter, wrote in striking similarity to the prophet Isaiah concerning man's transient nature and God's permanent Word:

For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower thereof falls away:

But the word of the Lord endures for ever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you. 1 Peter I 1: 24-25

 

Biblically Speaking (c)Karl Thompson, 1999.