How to deal with grief and loss
Abraham said, I must bury my dead out of my sight. He put away the things of Sarah. Not to forget her, but to bury her, he was not saying she was not a part of my life, but he was saying she has died, and if I am to live, I must live with the living and not the dead. Death will come soon enough, you are still among the living, you are still here so those who have died must be put out of your sight or you will be focused on death rather than life. This is not to scorn their memory. There will come a time that your heart has healed from the grief and sorrow, and then you can remember them with the joy and fondness that is healthy and good. But until that time to keep everything before your eyes is much like keeping their dead body in your living room. It brings with it a stinch and sadness. It must be put away.
To put your dead out of your sight it takes some time, Abraham had to prepare a place to do so. It also takes some expense, Abraham paid for his burial place, it cost him four hundred shekels. A shekel is on half ounce of silver so at current prices this burial place cost him over $6,700. Putting your dead out of your sight isn’t just about their physical body, it is also about the things around the house and your living places that would anchor you to the past in the present. Until you have had the time to heal those things should be put out of your sight as well.
At this point in Genesis, Isaac is now around 37 years old, Abraham 137, and Sarah has died at 127 years of age. It doesn’t matter what age a person is, when we face death it is a horror and sorrow. The reason that it is such a woeful trial is because of what it represents. Physical death is the reminder of the wages of sin.
In Genesis 2:17 God told Adam and Eve, “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.” We know according to Romans 6:23, “The wages of sin is death,…”
Prior to Adam and Eve’s sin in the garden there was no death, not physically and not spiritually. Man was created in perfection and had never experienced death. But sin brought forth death, sin brought forth sorrow and pain. And death is an ever present reminder of the consequences of sin.
When you drive down the street and see a cemetery, you are faced with the reality of the effects of sin. That is why we spend so much time trying to beautify it. We dress it up and put flowers around it, we paint up our dead and put them in suits, we buy special caskets to present a beautiful picture at the funeral and we gloss over the truth of death.
