People are like grass and flowers. By Thomas Boston

Psalm 90, verses 5 and 6

You sweep men away in the sleep of death, They are like the new grass of the morning, Though in the morning it springs up new, By evening it is dry and withered. As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field, the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more.

All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the Lord blows on them. Surely the people are grass.

All people, even the strongest and most healthy people, are like the grass that dies away. Their beauty fades as quickly as the beauty of flowers in a field. The grass is flourishing in the morning, but being cut down by the mowers, in the evening it is withered.

Likewise, man sometimes is walking up and down at ease in the morning. and in the evening is lying as a corpse, being struck down by a sudden blow with one or another of death's weapons.

The flower at best is but a weak and tender thing, of short continuance wherever it grows. But observe, man is not compared to the flower of the garden, but to the flower in the field, which the foot of every beast may tread down at any time.

In the same way, our life is liable to a thousand accidents every day, any of which may cut us off. But though we should escape all these, yet at length the Lord sweeps us away, and we are gone.

Man is like a breath. His days are like a fleeting shadow. You turn men back to dust, saying, Return to dust, O sons of men.

So teach us to number our days aright, That we may gain a heart of wisdom.

Psalm 90 verse 12