Puzzling Pictures 5: Rest In Peace

If you’re wondering what that sad site was (see entry for 20.04.18), then the photograph above will enlighten you. (In case your screen is too small, the sign says: Life for a Life, Memorial Forests & Gardens, Warriors Rest, Dunnockshaw.) On the wooden post between the tree trunk and the supporting stake is a plaque with a name on it. Warriors Rest (sic) refers to a section set aside for those who have served in the Armed Forces. 

Apparently there are forty or so of these sites around the country. For a fee or “donation” to this charity, you can have a tree planted at one of them in memory of a loved one. It isn’t cheap: All trees are a minimum donation of £595.00; this donation includes one of our standard green plastic plaques, the interment of one set of ashes, a certificate of plantation and an inscription into a Book of Remembrance. 

There are extras that you can specify, if you so wish. A Memorial Bench costs £595.00 minimum, as does a wooden Picnic Table. You can upgrade your plastic plaque to a Gold Effect one (£75.00) or a Stainless Steel one (£95.00). And then there are Memorial Keepsakes, Certificates Of Plantation, and so on.

From the Life For A Life website, we learn that The scheme has been specifically designed to benefit individuals and families who are grieving over the loss of a loved one, regardless of their age, status or religious beliefs. Fair enough. Also, we are told that Life for a Life is an established charity created to raise funds for Hospitals, Hospices and other Health Care related organisations. That can’t be bad, can it?

What was it about this site that made me sad, then?

Consider the following statement, also from their website: There are many positive aspects to this scheme including the replacement of negative feelings of pain and loss with uplifting feelings arising from the creation of a new life. 

Planting a tree will make up for the loss of a loved one? That seems to me to be a sadly deficient view of the value of a human life. When we read of “the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day” (Genesis 3.8), it seems unlikely that He was there to talk to the trees; that privilege was reserved for those made in His image, Adam and Eve. And yes, we do fade and fall like the flowers of the field, but our soul goes on - not to become ‘one with the universe’, as some believe, certainly not to be reborn on earth into another life, but to stand before our Saviour Himself: “it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgement”. (Hebrews 9.27)

Each memorial tree is fully guaranteed for a minimum period of twenty five years, the website tells us. I trust that the fallen one in the photograph will be replanted before the root ball dries out entirely. But, no matter how long that tree lives, it will eventually fall once more, and die, and disintegrate. The names on several of the plaques nearby have already faded into illegibility; and the Book of Remembrance, no matter how well preserved it may be at present, will one day return to the dust from which it came. No matter how much you pay, there is no permanent memorial here. That’s sad.

I was also reminded of the need that so many feel to create gardens, or to be out and about in the Great Outdoors, even in its fallen state, or to be laid to rest in a garden-like setting. Surely these desires spring from a longing to return to that first garden in Eden, the paradise from which man was excluded when he first disobeyed and rebelled against his heavenly Father. There, there were trees in abundance, including “The tree of life...in the midst of the garden”. (Genesis 2.9) Sad to say, many of those who hope to sleep in peace in a garden of rest at the end of this life are only deceiving themselves. The bible makes it plain that, even in death, “There is no peace…for the wicked.” (Isaiah 57.21)

Only the born again believer in Jesus Christ will rest in peace at last, not sleeping, but alive for ever more. He has no need of an earthly Book of Remembrance, since his name is already written in the Lamb’s Book of Life (Revelation 20.11-15), and the Saviour Himself has prepared a place for him in “the holy city, new Jerusalem”. (Revelation 21.2) 

Apocalyptic, allusive and symbolic though it may be, the language of Revelation suggests strongly that there we will find a garden even more glorious than the paradise that was lost: “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and His servants will worship Him. They will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.” (Revelation 22.1-5)