One summer about 20 years ago, my family spent a couple of days on a genealogical pilgrimage. We visited the town in Quebec where my great great (...I don’t remember how many greats) grandfather John Hinks and his wife Elsie settled after they immigrated from England. We traced their children to Powerscourt, Quebec, about a mile north of the US border, and found their names listed each week in a church tithing ledger. And we followed another ancestor across the border to Northern New York state, where my family first settled in the US and my great grandfather Amos grew up on a farm a few miles away from Almanzo Wilder (of “Little House” fame).

Throughout this journey of self-discovery, the most durable and findable landmarks were the gravestones. They ranged from a barely-readable, weathered white marker in a small churchyard to marble slabs marking off an entire family plot in a well-ordered cemetery. Each served as a lasting statement: These people lived here, invested in this place, were part of this community. What the gravestones don’t tell us is whether these people lived full, satisfying lives or died full of regrets for dreams unfulfilled or promises unkept.

This Sunday, Daniel guided us through Genesis 23, which describes the death and burial of Abraham’s wife Sarah. At first glance it’s an oddly specific yet seemingly irrelevant interlude. After lengthy negotiations, Abraham pays 400 silver shekels for a field with a cave that will serve as a family tomb for the next several generations. What are we supposed to learn from this? Closer examination reveals that this story only serves to continue and accentuate the ongoing story of God’s relationship with Abraham. After waiting decades for a promised son, Isaac is born - and yet the other parts of God’s promise remain unfulfilled. Abraham not possess the land (despite “all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever”); he doesn’t even own enough to bury his wife until he buys it from the Hittites. Yet even when faced with the finality of death, his very actions demonstrate his unshakeable faith. Abraham chooses to establish a burial ground HERE, in THIS land rather than return Sarah’s body to Ur for burial because he believes that God’s promise to give him and his descendants the land is certain and cannot be prevented by death.

All of us encounter death sooner or later, whether our own or that of a loved one. In those moments, what will our actions say about our faith? Unlike Abraham, we can read about the fulfillment of God’s promises in Jesus, and His resurrection gives us tangible proof that our hope is stronger than death.

And what about the ordinary, everyday, non-life-or-death moments? Are we living fully invested in God’s promises? Have we put down roots in God’s promises, no matter how impossible they may seem, and made a home there? As Colossians 3:1-3 exhorts, “If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”

Where are you buried?

~ Joanna Hinks