God cares for the temporary things in this world. He dresses things with great beauty even though they are passing. He gives beauty to what lasts only a little while. If that is true of grass, then what does it say of men and women made in his image, what does it say of those who belong to Christ. What does it say about you and me? It says we can trust him.

You’ve heard it said, “out of sight, out of mind.” I think this is true, but it could also be said, “seen every day, and yet rarely seen at all.”

There are some things so familiar to us that most of us stop seeing them. This is why I’ve been writing about the theology of things that seem boring and maybe even worthless.

Grass is one of these things.

Grass is everywhere. It’s under our feet, along the road, in the yard, in the Iowa fields, growing where we want it and even where we don’t. We mow it, walk on it, ignore it, curse it when it grows too fast, and then forget about it. And yet God uses grass to teach us some of the most important lessons in all of Scripture. All we have to do is slow down and look.

One of the stranger things about life is how often God puts wonderful truth inside of the most overlooked things. We are the kind of people who expect great lessons to arrive through a loud voice from heaven (I see this a lot in the techniques of false teachers. They want the signs and miracles but neglect the more important things like the Bible).

But God is quite simplistic in his art of teaching. The main way he teaches is through his word. Indeed I’m trying to see everything through his word, even grass.

So, what is theological about a blade of grass?

The first thing I’d like to point out is that grass teaches us how brief our lives are.

Isaiah 40 says,

“All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades… but the word of our God will stand forever” (6–8).

Human life is fragile. Indeed our beauty is fragile, our strength, reputation, youth, plans, ambitions, all of it is far less durable than we want to believe. We can watch a man build so much in this world and still be, in the end, like grass in the evening shadow. He rises, he flourishes, he bends in the wind, and soon enough he is gone.

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