People are like grass and flowers!

(
Thomas Boston, 1676-1732, "Death")

"You sweep men away in the sleep of death; they are like the new grass of the morning—though in the morning it springs up new, by evening it is dry and withered." Psalm 90:5-6

"As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more." Psalm 103:15-16

"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." Isaiah 40:6-7

People are like grass and flowers!


"All people," even the strongest and most healthy people, are like the grass that dies away. Their beauty fades as quickly as the beauty of flowers in a field.

The grass is flourishing in the morning; but, being cut down by the mowers, in the evening it is withered. Likewise, man sometimes is walking up and down at ease in the morning—and in the evening is lying as a corpse, being struck down by a sudden blow, with one or another of death's weapons.

The flower, at best, is but a weak and tender thing, of short continuance wherever it grows. But observe, man is not compared to the flower of the 'garden'; but to the "flower in the field"—which the foot of every beast may tread down at any time.

Thus is our life liable to a thousand accidents every day, any of which may cut us off. But though we should escape all these—yet at length the LORD sweeps them away, and they are gone!

"Man is like a breath; his days are like a fleeting shadow!" Psalm 144:4

"You turn men back to dust, saying: Return to dust, O sons of men." Psalm 90:3

"So teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom." Psalm 90:12