“. . .for like the grass they will soon wither,
like green
plants they will soon die away.”
Lawns are shabby. We’re not in any kind of drought, but the abundant
rainfall we’ve had this spring and summer probably kept the grass from having
to reach for moisture so that when the rain stopped and the heat pulled in our
lawn turned to toast, the grass going as dormant as it will come January.
King David is not wrong in his appraisal of things here: real villains—real evil men and women—don’t
last. Their hay-day is fleeting, you might say. Hitler and Stalin had designs
on world conquest, but they both like a’moldering right now. Bin Laden is a
footnote. Right now, it’s Putin who’s blood-letting in the name of conquest. If
we believe the verse, won’t be long and he’ll be toast too—that’s the promise
here.
I know what David means.
Why beat around the bush?
This isn’t my favorite verse in the Bible, and I probably have Walt
Whitman to blame. What’s my
quarrel? I don’t like the simile. Grass has been withering all month long under
the heavy gaze of an outrageous July sun.
The perennials aren’t standing up well either. I know what David means.
But last night a cold front came through and this morning we’re
twenty degrees colder than yesterday.
Highs today may reach into the 70s; for most of the month, we’ve been in
the 90s. Our air conditioning shut down last
night, and you know what else?—if the temp stays close to what it is this
morning, it won’t take long and that tawny grass will be emerald, May-like
green. Those perennials we’re so proud of? —they’ll be back. They may wither for a season, but they’ll be
a bouquet again. You know that too.
There’s something unspoken in this verse that reminds me of
horror movies because just when you think the blob or whatever atomic anteater
devastating New York is finally gone, there’s this wink, this raised eyebrow that
suggests it may not be completely wiped out. The wicked, says David, are like grass—they
die.
Well, I got news. Grass doesn’t die quite so fast. It may
get cut and shorn; it may brown like old leather and get prickly underfoot; the
earth may go bald beneath it, but the grass will be back.
That’s what Leaves of
Grass is all about, and while I’m not into yawping as barbarically as Walt
Whitman, his American classic testifies, from the middle of the mayhem of the
Civil War, that the grass will come back.
Some may well consider “Song of Myself” to be holy
writ. I don’t count myself among them.
But, like Whitman, I love green stuff; and I just can’t help my unease when
David equates beasts like Putin with God’s beneficent growing things. It’s the
Bible, the word of God, but here, I wish he’d have found some other comparison.
Trust me. I will take the lesson to heart because it is the
most comforting assurance God’s word offers anywhere, anytime—what it comes to
is little more than this imponderable assurance: “don’t be afraid.” That’s the real
of this versestory, something that needs to be said, time after time after
time. And then again and again. And again.
Fear is a killer. Don’t be afraid. Trust in Him.
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