Millpond Musing – What Withers? What Fades?

The grass withereth, the flower fadeth. I don’t know if I ever really understood the context of this passage which is found in Isaiah, Chapter 40, and reiterated in 1 Peter Chapter 1. I have long thought the statement told of the physical death of a man. You know: Our end would one day come. The statement served to be a warning of that great and awful coming judgment. Of course, those events are true enough. We shall die. We shall die and be judged, but that is not how C.H. Spurgeon took and relayed the verse. In his three discourses: ‘Spring in the Garden,’ ‘Spring Follows Winter,’ and The Grass Withereth, the Flower Fadeth,’ (The Teachings of Nature in the Kingdom of God) what withers and fades is the sinner-soon-to-be-saint’s resistance to the workings of the Holy Spirit unto his redemption. Really? Huh!

What is the winter then of a man’s soul but finding out the things of earth… our sin, our supposed loveliness… our attractiveness to others in their sin, and the attracted-ness of others to mine… that is what must wither and fade. Why do I say this? Well, consider this statement written by Pastor Spurgeon, “The withering before the sowing was very marvelously fulfilled in the preaching of John the Baptist.” Pastor continues of John, “It was not his work to plant, but to hew down.” Spring follows winter in the life of God’s children and the planting of His garden. It must. Thus, we must preach what the world does not want to hear… as John the Baptist, but also, as John, to be quick to point out in love to the One, Jesus, whose sandals we are also unworthy to unstrap. Now, that is a Gospel communicated in truth and love when the hearer knows that we – in humility and grace – were as unworthy as they must necessarily know they are to repent and to esteem Christ in their lives. Yes, it’s the Sun of Righteousness that causes the earthly stately grass to wither, the flower of one’s own beauty to fade if spring is ever to come in that man’s life.

How quickly the saved man or women learns that the grass and flower of their lives were nothing but thorns and nettles.