I am a stranger and a sojourner with you. Give me a possession of a burying-place with you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight. – Genesis 23:4

Abraham was full of grief when his wife Sarah died.  He mourned greatly over her.  But then there came a time when he asked the people he was living with to give him somewhere to bury her ‘out of his sight’. 

It’s right and good for us to grieve over things, and to take the time to grieve something that we’ve lost.  Often in our society we’re expected to move on from grief very quickly – but grief is a process and it’s important that we go through the process and allow ourselves to mourn and be sad for something that we no longer have.

Yet there also comes a time when we have to bury that which we have lost ‘out of our sight’.  Our vision – our focus needs to move on to what lies ahead for us.  Otherwise we will never move on.  We move from an active grief to a passive grief. 

It’s tragic when we lose something or someone that means a lot to us, but like Abraham, maybe there’s something that you’re continuing to grieve over today that you really need to ‘bury’ now and move out of your vision, so that you can continue to walk in all that God has called you to do.