I remember some years ago seeing lovely small gardens around headstones in the cemeteries of Norway. What’s more, there seemed to be a small gardening shed or tool storage area at each cemetery, complete with gloves and trowels and other gardening implements, making the gardening that much easier. Oh, and there were typically several watering cans and a water source readily available, too. It made the whole task of maintaining these small gardens that much easier. I wondered about some practicalities– what if someone didn’t have any family to plant or maintain their garden or family didn’t live nearby? how were they maintained for so many generations? (I’d love to know more about Norwegian culture, and what it takes to keep cemetaries so beautiful!) But mostly I just delighted in the beauty and the care taken.

For me so much of the new life of resurrection that we proclaim is visible at this time of year in the beauty of a world coming alive with flowers and the bright green of leaves. (It has occurred to me to wonder on more than a few occasions how Easter would be different for me if I lived in the southern hemisphere, where it occurs as fall is beginning.)

There was something about these micro-gardens that was a proclamation of life– death wasn’t the final answer. As we say in our worship booklet in the Easter season, though death is real, life is stronger.

Where are the places that you experience resurrection, that you see life “trampling” death?

Yours in faith,

Cynthia