Rose Walk, Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, October 2025

“Pay close attention now:
    I’m creating new heavens and a new earth.
All the earlier troubles, chaos, and pain
    are things of the past, to be forgotten.
Look ahead with joy.
     Anticipate what I’m creating.” Isaiah 65:17-18 (Message Bible) 

“No more shall there be in it
an infant who lives but a few days . . .
They shall not labor in vain
nor bear children for calamity. Isaiah 65:20, 23 NRSV

The loss of a child is among life’s most painful experiences, however that loss might come, regardless of the child’s age. Whether cut down by illness, casualty of war, or act of violence . . . the death of a child changes everything. Family dynamics are altered. Trusting the world is a safe place becomes difficult.

I read these passages from Isaiah, yearning for that day, when no child is born for misfortune, or  calamity ever befalls them.   Instead, we live in a world where  too many children are born into traumatic situations, and infants’ lives are  cut short.

We live between the promise and its fulfillment . . . Between God’s vision for the world and our  reality. Bombs fall, illness strikes, violence intrudes, accidents happen, and infants are born with life threatening challenges.

God’s vision and dream are given for a purpose. That purpose is for society to work to create the world God hopes and dreams for us. A world where every child is treasured, and violence never rips a family apart. Where dread diseases are conquered, and a parent’s prayer for their child is answered with health. God’s vision is for a world where wars are ended, diseases cured, and all people live in  harmony and in peace with one another.

May it be that we commit ourselves to that work, using the  gifts God has given us, to bring God’s  vision closer to reality.