Learning to Learn from Flowers and Grass
Adam C. Parker
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 out God stands forever” (Is. 40:7-8).
These verses, when coupled with a reflection upon the Lordship attributes of God’s Authority and Control, really seem to make a lot of sense to me! Consider the structure of the two verses, one following the other, each following a very similar pattern: “The grass withers and the flowers fall …” In one sense, we see an irony. God obviously is the cause of the flower’s growth. It brings Him glory and admiration both from men and from the angels. Yet the verse also says that it is God who causes (by his breath or word) the flower to fall over and (implicitly) to die.
What majesty and authority that God can justly bring death and give life! What majesty to know that though beauty may not endure, that his word is so much more valuable than any temporal comfort, beauty, smell, or experience. It is God who causes the flower to live, it is God who causes the flower to die, but he does this because he wants the world to see that “the word of our God stands forever.” The death of even the flower serves a purpose: reflection upon the glory of God.
Amplify this difficulty to an even larger scale, add a large number of difficulties, mix it up with human misunderstanding, and we have a paradigm for understanding the problem of evil and death, once again, reflecting also on the Lordship attributes of control and authority. How may I so quickly bring men into the equation, replacing flowers and grass with men? The simple answer is that Isaiah does it. We have just finished examining verses 7 and 8, but in verse six, the author writes that “all men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field.” We are then introduced by the author, to the preceeding discussion of God’s rights, control, and purpose with creation.
What we find when we reflect on the problem of evil and suffering in light of God’s authority is that, since all things originate from him, and since all things have their continued existence from him, God in every sense, has the right to do whatever he chooses with his creations, the work of his hands.
We should have pause before we consider charging God with wrong in bringing about suffering in the world. 1) If God has a good purpose (His own glory, let’s say), and 2) If God has the authority (i.e. the right to control creation in whatever way he sees fit), and 3) if God has the ability to control all things, then we may also be justified in saying that if the truth fulfills the previous three qualifications, then 4) we may unequivocally argue that no one may charge God with wrongdoing by doing what He wills with creation.
Consider only ten verses after the “flower discussion”:
Before him all the nations are as nothing;
They are regarded by him as worthless
And less than nothing (v. 17).
This verse, it would seem (taken in the context of
the preceding discussion), presents many difficulties to the modern Christian
who believes that he must “have rights” and that God cannot, for example,
“violate my free-will.”[1] The point of scripture is that man does have
rights, but only what is granted to him on behalf of God. The point of scripture is not man and his
rights, but God and his freedom: God and his rights.
Scripture
is therefore not nearly as concerned as we are to promote our self-esteem. We would like to believe that the meaning
and significance of our lives depend on what we do for ourselves, without any
outside influences or constraints. In
scripture, however, the goal of human life is to glorify God. Our dignity is to be found not in what we
do, but in what God has done for us and in us.
Our meaning and significance are to be found in the fact that God has
created us in His image and redeemed us by the blood of his Son. The biblical writers are not horrified, as
modern writers tend to be, by the thought that we might be under the control of
another. If the other is God, and he
has made us for his glory, then we could not possibly ask for a more meaningful
existence.[2]