The Fading Flower: The Rank God Already Reversed
For years, when someone asked what I did, the answer was banking technology. Lately the order has changed. I say Christian writer first. The day job comes later, if the conversation lasts long enough to need it.
Nobody asked me to rearrange anything, and both answers are true. But I noticed that I had started choosing which one arrives first. I think I wanted the first word to do some of the seating for me.
James writes to scattered believers who are meeting “trials of various kinds” (James 1:2), and in the middle of that counsel he stops to address two people:
Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation, and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flower of the grass he will pass away. For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass; its flower falls, and its beauty perishes. So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits. — James 1:9–11, ESV
Both are told to boast. One verb serves them, and James gives them opposite reasons. The lowly brother receives his reversal in a single line, and he is told to boast in it now, while he is still lowly. Then James slows down and keeps his eye on the rich. The sun comes up. The grass dries. The flower drops, and its beauty goes with it. The rich man does not fade at the end of a finished life, looking back over it. He fades “in the midst of his pursuits.” He is still going.
I read that paragraph from the lowly side. It feels better to look up than to look down. Given the choice, we would rather be the one who gets the short, kind sentence than the one James lingers over.
But I am in the middle of pursuits too. There are books in progress, devotionals still in draft, and tools I am still building. James does not call any of that wrong. He only says the rich man fades while his plans are still in motion, and I cannot read that line as if it were only about him.
There is a quieter problem underneath. The low place can become a label of its own. “At least I’m not him” is still a way of telling people where to seat me. We can be proud of the chair nobody wanted.
The grass and the flower are older than James. Isaiah used them centuries before him:
All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the LORD blows on it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. — Isaiah 40:6–8, ESV
Surely the people are grass. That includes the lowly brother. He will not outlast the sun any better than the rich man will. Whatever exaltation he has, he did not grow it. God “brought us forth by the word of truth” (James 1:18), and that word is not grass. It stands forever.
Peter quotes these same lines and tells us what that word is: “this word is the good news that was preached to you” (1 Peter 1:25). A few verses earlier he writes about Christ: “you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ” (1 Peter 1:18–19). And he writes about the God “who raised him from the dead and gave him glory” (1 Peter 1:21). Even that glory is spoken of as given. We were never expected to grow our own.
James finishes the thought in the verse right after the fading flower: “Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him” (James 1:12). The promise does not ask what either man owned. It is made to those who love God.
I will probably keep saying writer first. But James told the lowly brother to boast, and a boast is meant to be said. So here is mine: the first true thing about me is something God has promised, and it will still be standing when the sun comes up.
Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Developed with the assistance of AI writing tools, under the author’s full theological review and final editorial control.
