“I am a sojourner and foreigner among you; give me property among you for a burying place, that I may bury my dead out my sight.”
These are unhappy yet faithful words spoken by Abraham as he grieved the death of Sarah his wife and began making preparations for her burial. I find them so instructive for pilgrim-minded believers today. Abraham never lost sight of the fact that he was a “sojourner and foreigner” living in a land that God had promised to give him and his offspring as an inheritance.
At the time Abraham spoke these words to his Hittite neighbors he had yet to own even one square inch of real estate in Canaan. He didn’t even have a place to bury his wife. Had Abraham followed the standard burial practice of his day he would have probably carted Sarah’s body back home to the land of their fathers in Ur of the Chaldeans.
But something compels him in his grief to bury his wife here in Hebron of Canaan. What was it? It was hope! A hope fueled by his faith that God would make good on his promise and give his descendants the land of Canaan. The first piece of promised land to be realized for Abraham was the field and cave he purchased for his wife’s body. Through death God was beginning to make good on his promise. This cave became a kind of “family cemetery” where Abraham, Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob, and Leah were also buried. Canaan, of course, was not heaven, but it was a type of heaven. The author of Hebrews reminds us that
“These all died, not having received the things promised, but having seem them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city” (Heb. 11:13-16)
