Austin's Blog

I often think of the metaphor of our children as “plucked” flowers in the garden of God. This imagery was common among the Puritans and older saints, who were deeply familiar with child loss in their churches and communities—far more than we experience today. Why do I love this image so much?

First, it emphasizes God’s sovereign right over human life, both in birth and in death. Deuteronomy 32:39 declares, “See now that I myself am he! There is no god besides me. I put to death and I bring to life, I have wounded and I will heal, and no one can deliver out of my hand.” Samuel Rutherford reflects on this truth: “…if your Lord takes any of them home to His house before the storm comes on, take it well. The owner of the orchard may take down two or three apples off his own trees before midsummer, before they get the harvest sun, and it would not be seemly that his servant, the gardener, should chide him for it. Let our Lord pluck His own fruit at any season He pleases.” Life and death belong to Him alone.

Second, though the flower is plucked, it continues to grow in its new environment. It is not destroyed but transplanted to a better garden. A Christian instructor in Edinburgh wrote in December 1817, “The flower, over which the wind passed, is blossoming in heaven in fragrance and beauty, which the fondest workings of fancy could not conceive, and surely it is safer there than under this inclement sky.” Our beloved ones in Christ are now flourishing in the presence of the Master Gardener.

The little child, who once drifted to sleep with a gentle melody, now sings in heaven’s glorious choir. From lullabies on earth to the anthems of the redeemed, it joins in eternal joy. Jonathan Edwards beautifully describes this heavenly harmony: “Every saint in heaven is as a flower in that garden of God, and holy love is the fragrance and sweet odor that they all send forth, and with which they fill the bowers of that paradise above. Every soul there is as a note in some concert of delightful music, that sweetly harmonizes with every other note, and all together blend in the most rapturous strains in praising God and the Lamb forever.”

Third, flowers exist for simple beauty—for God’s glory. They are here today and gone tomorrow. Jesus said, “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?” Just as He cares for the flowers of the field, He also cares for the ones He has plucked—our beloved dead.