“All people are like grass,
and all their faithfulness 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 endures forever.“
Isaiah 40:6b-8
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In the past year, I’ve taken a new part time job as a hospital chaplain. Most of my shifts are on-call, so I carry a pager around evenings, nights, and weekends when the full-time chaplain is off duty. If a hospital decides to wake up a chaplain in the middle of the night, it isn’t because a patient has a theological question they want to chat about: it’s because a patient is dying.
So, I regularly find myself sitting with a man or woman in their final hours, ministering to them and their loved ones in these hard, sacred moments. I regularly have the experience of being in the room as someone takes their final breath, then remaining by their side as the hours pass, as their body changes rapidly and notably, as the family members try to make enough sense of death that they can find the courage to leave the hospital and go home to a life that will never, ever be the same.
What I have learned from my new intimacy with death is this:
“All people are like grass,
and all their faithfulness 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.”
Isaiah 40:6b-7
I find myself walking around off-hours, at the grocery store, at the park, looking in the mirror, staring at our amazing, living, human bodies and deeply knowing that we are like the grass, that our bodies, too, will die. For sure. 100%.
Most of us get through the day by forgetting about this as much as possible. We move death to the side so we can go on imagining ourselves immortal. Or, as described in Ecclesiastes, we try to squeeze as much experience from life as we can—or the opposite (also in Ecclesiastes) grow cynical at the uselessness of even trying to outrun the truth of our coming demise.
But there is another path, and that is what we will look at more closely tomorrow: worship.
“The grass withers and the flowers fall,
but the word of our God endures forever.”
Isaiah 40:8
Questions for reflection and discussion:
- Do you think about death, and the fact that we are mortal?
- In what ways are we like grass?
- How does that help you to think about your life?
- How does it help you to think about God?
Church Reading Plan: Isaiah 31; Revelation 1