Like Grass

This week our city was hit with a sudden shock of cold. The temperature dipped into the low 30's, bringing us a few gray mornings with ice and frost. I didn't think we'd start using the ice scraper so soon! One of these quiet mornings, while trying to defrost the ice on my car before going to work, I decided to brave the biting cold a few more minutes to take a picture: delicate frost was clinging to the blades of grass outside our apartment in such a beautiful way and I knew that it would be gone by mid-morning.

Later that evening, when I came home from work, I noticed that one of our outdoor hanging plants, which was once bright purple and thriving, had become dull and lifeless, with its stems and leaves drooping over the edges of its pot. In just one day, what was once alive and growing became dead and limp. The little plant did not survive the cold.

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We read Isaiah 40 in Sem Wives class this week and I was reminded again of just how great and majestic our God is, and then of how fragile we are:

Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance?  - Isaiah 40:12

All flesh is like grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the LORD blows on it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. - Isaiah 40:6b-8

We are like grass, here today and gone the next; He holds the oceans in the hollows of His hand. I was reminded this week that, in my natural state, I magnify myself and minimize God without much thought. But God is so much bigger, so much greater than I often remember Him to be! And also, we are far more fragile and dependent and in need of Him than I like to think we are!

Isaiah 40 is breathtaking and I need that perspective adjustment daily. How beautiful the Gospel is when we see Him as He is!