Bury Your Dead--Gen. 23

 

"And Abraham stood up from before his dead, and spake unto the sons of Heth, saying, I am a stranger and a sojourner with you: give me a possession of a buryingplace with you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight" (Gen. 23:3,4).

Not many years passed after Abraham's colossal test and triumph. The patriarch dwelt in Canaan still, among the children of Heth; and sadness struck the little camp.

"And Sarah was an hundred and seven and twenty years old:...And Sarah died in Kirjatharba;…" (vs. 1,2).

Laughing skeptic to loving saint; and now she is laid to rest, to look forward to the resurrection morning still many years distant for the elderly couple.

Abraham's old heart must've shattered with grief. "Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her" (vs. 2).

As a sojourner in a land that had been promised him by Heaven, but had not been deeded to him, Abraham lacked a proper place to bury Sarah. After a time of mourning, weeping, and sorrow before the still form of Sarah, the Bible records something interesting.

"And Abraham stood up from before his dead" (vs. 3).

It doesn't seem strange at first glance. To kneel in front of a departed loved one, asking God for comfort, trying to accept reality, weeping.

But the point wasn't that he was kneeling.

It was that he got up.

He further said, "Give me a possession of a buryingplace...that I may bury my dead out of my sight" (vs. 4).

In other words, it's time to let go. The past is past. It's time to bury my dead.

Life goes past us everyday. Every time we lie down to sleep, one more day is resigned to history.

And with every breath you take, one more moment is history as well.

So many people carry the past with them. Everywhere they go. They live in the past, the glory of what once was. Something that has ceased to be and likely never will be again.

They are so busy looking behind, they have no time to look ahead.

And no time to notice where they are at that moment.

By the time they do notice, the now has become far past, and the future is still unheeded.

Abraham was a man worthy of being an example. True, he made mistakes. Everyone in life does.

And he buried his dead. Stood up. Looked forward, not back.

No, he never forgot Sarah. He carried the memory of her in his heart. He still loved the woman who had been by his side for so many trying, painful years.

But he buried his dead. Carrying a treasure of memories more precious than all his riches, he buried his dead and let the past be past.

And looked to the future.

Nothing, save but one thing, can be said.

It's time to bury the past.

Lord, teach me how to bury the past...and embrace the future...