Grace in Wilderness

The other day, the girls and I were driving around town when we passed by a graveyard. From the back seat, my middle child confidently announced that we were driving by a “grave garden.”

She explained that it was a place where people were buried so they could be turned into flowers. 
“That’s why it’s called a garden, right Mama?”

“That’s exactly right, honey.” I replied. I glanced at her through the rearview mirror and saw she had the biggest smile on her face because she thought she had figured it out all on her own.

I didn’t correct her in that moment because I actually love the idea of a grave garden.

There is something beautiful about the way a child can take something that feels heavy and turn it into something full of life. A graveyard, in her mind, wasn’t a place where people go when they die. It was a garden, a place where something grows.

And perhaps she understands something that we adults sometimes forget.

Death is real. It hurts. We feel the weight of loss, and Scripture never asks us to pretend otherwise. Even Jesus wept at the grave of His friend Lazarus. But our faith tells us that death is not the end of the story.

Because Jesus died and rose again, we have the hope of resurrection. Those who belong to Him have a promise far greater than their earthly legacy. We have the promise of new life. The same resurrection power that raised Jesus from the dead is at work in us, and one day, we too will experience resurrection.

That changes the way we can look at a grave. It doesn’t make the grave less painful. But it does make it less final.

Maybe that’s why I love my daughter’s accidental theology so much. She didn’t see a graveyard as a place of endings. She saw a garden, a place of new beginnings and growth.

“It is the same way with the resurrection of the dead. Our earthly bodies are planted in the ground when we die, but they will be raised to live forever.” | 1 Corinthians 15:42 (NLT)

Paul paints a similar picture when he talks about the power found in resurrection. While we may not understand everything about what happens beyond this life, we can trust the One who has already gone through death and come out the other side. With that in mind, we can then start looking at the grave differently. Not because death isn’t sad, but because Jesus has conquered death. Amen!

I think my five-year-old may be onto something. When we belong to Jesus, the grave does not get the final word. There is resurrection coming. There is new life coming. There is a day when what looks like an ending will be revealed as the beginning of something far more beautiful than we can imagine.

And until then, we wait.

We hope.

We remember.

And we trust the Gardener.

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