On a Saturday morning prior to our Service for the Departed in 1982, Carol, Randy and I went to El Camino Memorial Park in San Diego. We went to visit the grave of one of our church members who had been laid to rest a few days before. We wanted to be sure that the fresh grave site was clean and dignified.
As we walked through the rows of grave sites in search of our church member’s grave, we glanced upon the many grave markers with names and dates. I was particularly taken and drawn to a grave stone of a young girl of seventeen. She had been murdered. I paused and prayed for her and her grieved parents. The deep hurt of her family leaped out of the inscription on the grave stone in the words “MURDERED” and “BARELY SEVENTEEN” and it gripped my soul.
We continued on until we found the grave of our friend. We found it was neatly groomed and still had some fresh flowers on it. After some moments of prayer and contemplation we left to return home.
As we drove through the park toward the exit, Randy saw a pond with ducks swimming around. He begged me to stop and allow him to go to see the ducks. I parked the car at the edge of the road and Randy and I got out.
We walked down the sloping grounds toward the pond. After a while observing the ducks swimming around the pond I told Randy it was time to leave and we began to trudge up the hill toward the car.
As we walked I looked down and noted that the grave stones had but one solitary date. I thought how unusual that was and realized that these were all very young children, infants most of them. I stopped in my tracks as the impact of this realization touched my soul. I stood transfixed as I took in the environment around me.
There in the midst of these graves were two pine trees with low hanging boughs. Dangling in the branches were toy cars and trucks, dolls and trinkets. I paused to consider this picture and realized that these toys were attempts of sorely grieving parents seeking to reach out to their child with a gift, a sign of their love for them not stilled by their death. I had this profound feeling in that instant; that what an amazing gift God gave us in prayer. We can pray for our departed loved ones, and thereby show our love for them in the spiritual and need not rely on the material.
Years later, I revisited this Garden of Innocents and found that the trees had been removed or trimmed and the toys and trinkets removed. Surveying the scene, now different from my first visit, in my heart I hoped that the parents of the babies memorialized there have since discovered that their prayers convey their undying love as no toy or trinket could ever do.
Turning Points
The first brief moment in the garden for innocent babies served to significantly deepen my appreciation for the awesome power of prayer. Faced with helpless and hopeless feelings that surface when we are unable to help someone, the power of prayer and the knowledge that prayer changes things, situations and me, becomes a turning point, revealing this God given resource known as prayer. It can be an inspiration to practice and master prayer, pouring out our deepest emotions to the One who hears and answers and changes things for our benefit.
COPYRIGHT © 2014 ALLAN EDWARD MUSTERER