A Beauty That Does Not Fade
“BEAUTY vanishes; beauty passes,” observed the poet Walter De la Mare. This is certainly the case with the magnificent cactus flowers depicted here. Their glory quickly fades.
The Christian disciple James wrote: “Like a flower of the vegetation he [the rich man] will pass away. For the sun rises with its burning heat and withers the vegetation, and its flower drops off and the beauty of its outward appearance perishes. So, too, the rich man will fade away in his ways of life.”—James 1:10, 11.
In this uncertain world, wealth can indeed disappear overnight. Furthermore, the rich man—like everyone else—is ‘short-lived, like a blossom.’ (Job 14:1, 2) Jesus told the parable of a man who had been busy accumulating wealth so that he could sit back and take life easy. But when he thought he had everything needed for a life of leisure, he died. Jesus warned: “So it goes with the man that lays up treasure for himself but is not rich toward God.”—Luke 12:16-21.
“Rich toward God.” What did Jesus mean by that? A man rich in this way has “treasures in heaven”—a good name with God. Such treasure need never fade. (Matthew 6:20; Hebrews 6:10) Instead of being like a flower that wilts, such a man is compared in the Bible to a tree, whose foliage does not wither. And, we are assured, “everything he does will succeed.”—Psalm 1:1-3, 6.