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A Fading Flower Ceases to Fade
BENEATH the busy streets of Rome lies a city that once teemed with more than three million people. Worn columns, crumbling walls and jumbled stones are all that remain of it. Its aged ruins stand among modern buildings and paved streets as mute reminders of the people who once walked its streets but who are now part of its dust.
Those people were not too different from us today. They had their homes, their families, their businesses and their pleasures. They had the same physical and emotional feelings and had their plans and hopes just as we have. But like the flowers that now sprout among the ruins of their city and then fade, so they lived a short while and then ceased to be. “As for mortal man, his days are like those of green grass; like a blossom of the field is the way he blossoms forth. For a mere wind has to pass over it, and it is no more.”—Ps. 103:15, 16.
But why must man’s life be like a fading flower? Why can it not be like a flower that never fades? Why can it not last a long time, like the sturdy sequoia tree? It can and it will. The One who created man purposed that it should when he placed the first human pair in a peaceful garden like beautiful flowers. It was man’s own willful disobedience that caused things to be different. Because man brought death upon himself it does not mean that God’s purposes failed. They never fail. “So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void.”—Isa. 55:11, AS.
Through undeserved kindness God provided the means for man to regain what the first pair lost. He did it with Christ. By this One’s giving up the right to perfect human life the way to eternal life was opened for obedient mankind.
It is only right that those who benefit from that sacrifice should be those who follow Christ’s example of obedience to God and not Adam’s example of disobedience. They will become like the tree that enjoys a long life. “As the days of a tree shall be the days of my people, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands.” (Isa. 65:22, AS) This promise will be fulfilled under God’s kingdom.
Multitudes today will be among earth’s inhabitants when that divine government rules the earth. They will see God’s original purposes fulfilled. At that time mankind, which is now a fading flower, will cease to fade.
