And I said, "What shall I cry?" 
   "All men are like grass, 
   and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. 

The grass withers and the flowers fall,

   because the breath of the LORD blows on them. 
   Surely the people are grass. 

The grass withers and the flowers fall,

   but the word of our God stands forever."</i>

Isaiah 40:6-8

So today, we have a Middle Eastern riddle:

Q: When is a man like grass? A: All the time.

The problem with being mortal is that you know it’s coming. Interestingly, the Bible doesn’t sugar-coat this reality. There it is in Isaiah 40:6-8. Reminds me of the joke about the blonde who went to the fortune teller to find out where she was going to die. The seer asked why she would want to have such terrible knowledge. The blonde answered, “So I can never go there!”

Amen, sister. And this mortality is really the big issue, isn’t it? It’s the elephant in the room. Why in the heck are we Westerners in such a hurry? There it is. Why do you want to get on with business, get the kids raised, hurry up and go to school, get a job, work, work, work so you can save, save, save? Because. The day is coming that your name will be called. And the work here is over.

And this, friends, is why the Gospel really is the Good News. Because there is another chapter in the pages that talks about men being like grass. In 1 Peter we are encouraged: 23For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. 24For, ‘All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, 25but the word of the Lord stands forever.’ And this is the word that was preached to you…”

We are told to believe that our physical death opens the door to a new and better life. And the universe is replete with examples of death and new life. The images above are stunning depictions of life and death. Here we have cellular birth through mitosis, and we see the death of a dying star: the Helix Nebula. This nebula is the closest one to our planet—a mere 450 light years away. So the image we see is actually how the star looked back when Shakespeare was writing Hamlet. The huge star is collapsing on itself, and hot and cold gasses are mixing. Eventually these hot gasses will be lost in the blackness of space. The star—and every star including our sun—comes from a perishable seed. But we believers are indwelled with a different seed of the Creator, and the result is an entirely different matter.

C.S. Lewis sums it up elegantly in his book, “The Weight of Glory”: “Nature is mortal; we shall outlive her. When all the suns and nebulae have passed away, each one of you will still be alive. Nature is only the image, the symbol; but it is the symbol Scripture invites me to use. We are summoned to pass in through Nature, beyond her, into that splendour which she fitfully reflects.”