The Grass Withers
We know we’re short for this earth, but our eternal mindset doesn’t lead us to treating our time here as insignificant or useless.
How might we live differently if it was regularly on our mind, that this world is temporary and we are headed for “the land of an uncloudy day”?
All flesh is grass and all of our fleeting loveliness is like flowers. All of us, along with this earth, are going to fade away.
“The grass withers, the flower fades, But the word of our God stands forever.”
—Isaiah 40:8
In a career, knowing that you are leaving your job soon typically leads to “short-timer’s syndrome”. Meetings that seemed so necessary 6 months ago now seem a little more optional. Deadlines don’t have the same bite. Breaks get longer and longer as work-ethic decreases the closer you get to your last day.
But that’s not how it ought to be for us. We know we’re short for this earth, but our eternal mindset doesn’t lead us to treating our time here as insignificant or useless. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.
“We know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure” (1 John 3:2-3).
Knowing full well that the grass here withers, the flower fades, and that the Word of the Lord stands forever—knowing that when we see Him we will be like Him—we place our hope in Him and endeavor to live our lives accordingly, standing fast in the Lord, increasing in love, in purity, and growing in the grace of our Lord Jesus.
“For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself.
“Therefore, my beloved and longed-for brethren, my joy and crown, so stand fast in the Lord, beloved” (Philippians 3:20 - 4:1).