Would You Like to Be in Paradise?
Few persons would think of any connection between a cemetery and a global paradise. But keep both in mind as you consider what is said here.
LIKE a small city nestled within the bosom of Hamburg, Germany, Ohlsdorf is growing at the rate of some 220 persons a week. It is graced with some 10,000 trees and bushes, lush with flowers of many colors and varieties.
Hundreds of thousands of persons visit Ohlsdorf every year. And I venture to say it is a place you might like to visit, but hardly a place where you would want to stay. The fact is, its over 1,200,000 permanent residents would have preferred not to have come in the first place. Yes, despite its being such a beautiful place, it really is no place to live. You see, Ohlsdorf is a cemetery! With its 403 hectares (996 acres), it is one of Europe’s largest cemeteries. If all its over 1,200,000 “inhabitants” had been buried in normal-sized graves placed side by side they would form a two-meter (6.5-ft.)-wide strip reaching 1,100 kilometers (684 mi.), from Hamburg, Germany, to Vienna, Austria!
But Ohlsdorf meant little to me until one sunny September day when I drove there to deliver a funeral talk for the deceased mother of a good friend of mine. The sermon was to be given in funeral parlor No. 10, and I remember asking myself: “Can the cemetery really be so large that at least 10 halls are needed?” When I got there I was amazed. And the more I saw, the more amazed I became. It was like being in a beautiful park, in a paradise.
Beginnings of Ohlsdorf “Paradise”
And how did this “paradise” come about? In the latter half of the 19th century Hamburg’s existing regional cemeteries were no longer large enough to care for the needs of the increasing population. So plans were made to locate a civic interdenominational cemetery in the Ohlsdorfer Fields, near a village of the same name, about 10 kilometers (6 miles) outside Hamburg. In later years the village became part of Hamburg, but the cemetery has become so well known that inhabitants of the area speak of persons who have died as “being in Ohlsdorf.”
Johann Wilhelm Cordes, its founder and designer, felt that in a cemetery, to use his own words, “beauty should captivate the eye and plants should conceal the grave.” In this he succeeded, because Ohlsdorf’s beauty cannot be denied nor can its plant life be overlooked. Cordes’ plans served at the turn of the century as a model for similar types of cemeteries in many other German cities.
Inside the cemetery over 300 different kinds of trees, some native to North America and Asia, are tagged with small explanatory plaques, making it look much like a botanical garden. Every June, 29 different types of large rhododendron bushes bloom on both sides of the cemetery’s main thoroughfare, “Cordes Avenue,” turning it into a breathtaking sight.
The park has 2,500 benches, 650 chairs and 660 water fountains. Hundreds of ducks, geese and black swans make their home on the ponds scattered throughout the area. So you can rest by a pond or fountain listening to a concert presented by these “feathered musicians.” Yes, one cannot help but enjoy the quiet and relaxing atmosphere. It was such beauty and peaceful conditions that started me thinking about paradise.
Reflections on Paradise
A paradise for the living would be most welcome, but why a paradise for the dead? No doubt one of the reasons why Cordes and others like him have built this type of cemetery is to help to take away the sheer tragedy of loss by death. Death is indeed man’s enemy, even as the Bible pointedly says. (1 Cor. 15:26) At times of great sorrow, beauty can help one to appreciate that, despite one’s loss, life is still worth living. But no physical kind of beauty can completely erase the feeling of loss that a widowed mother or a bereaved husband feels at such a moment.
Speaking about the universality and inevitability of death, Stern magazine says: “He arrives either too early or too late; but arrive without fail he does, and in the end he always wins. His name is death.” Faced with such an inevitability, is being in the kind of paradise represented by Ohlsdorf the best we have to look forward to? If so, that is scarcely a comfort. Who really wants to be a permanent resident in that kind of paradise?
I began to think how strange it is that, for many today, walking in a beautiful park seems to be as close to paradise as they ever hope to come. Is that true of you? If so, why? With all man’s technical and creative abilities, why is it that an earth-wide paradise appears incredible? Yet how would it be if the whole globe were a paradise, maybe something like the garden of Eden in the Bible account of Adam and Eve? Is God—who made the earth in the first place—interested in restoring paradise? And particularly important to us, do we have any sound reason to expect that he might make an earth-wide paradise in our lifetime?