Death of a Patriarch: Genesis 25:7-18

For those in God, death has no lasting impact upon anything that truly matters.  This is a hard sentence to type, because the pain of death is real for those left behind.  We deal with emotional responses.  We feel physical absence.  Our flesh struggles greatly with our spirit when confronted with death.  Because of God, we can mourn differently than the world.

After living a full life, Abraham died.  Sarah’s death was covered in a verse.  Abraham’s death is covered in about three verses.  Death isn’t that big of a deal.

Don’t get me wrong.  From the perspective of the flesh, death is a huge deal.  We go from conscious life to no longer being a part of creation.  The flesh undergoes a significant change – the most significant change it experiences other than conception!  To the flesh, death is quite the significant moment.

To the spirit, death is not significant.  Spiritually, we do not lose a single thing when we die.  We remain loved by God and in God’s care.  We remain loved by our close friends and family.  We also continue to love God and those also in God.  We believe one day we will be with them again in a perfect expression of God’s love.  From a spiritual perspective, death is a change in state, but not a loss.

The rest of the world looks upon death significantly differently.  When leaders of other kingdoms died, they left scrawling epitaphs of their works.  That’s the whole point of the monuments we still have from the ancient world!  The rest of the world sees death as a hugely significant moment.  The rest of the world struggles to move on when a loved one dies. 

In God, we are different.  We mourn because our routine changes and we’ll no longer relate to our loved one in the flesh.  But we still love them.  God still loves them.  Nothing needs to change other than how we put our love into practice.

Ishmael and Isaac come to bury Abraham.  This answers some questions from the Hagar story.  If Ishmael came to bury Abraham, relationship still existed.  It’s not like Ishmael could see the news report on the internet.  Someone had to tell him.  Someone had to know where to find him.  After almost a century of life, Ishmael had to have reason to care.  What’s more, Isaac and Ishmael do it together. 

There is much more to the story of Abraham, Isaac, and Ishmael than the Bible tells us.  It’s easy to think Abraham sent Hagar and Ishmael away and cast them out.  This story indicates that reality was significantly different than we often like to make it out to be.

As a footnote, Ishmael also dies.  His lineage is recorded in Genesis to complete the story.  Once more there is no great epitaph.  Ishmael dies, he is buried, and life goes on.  For those in God, death has no lasting impact upon anything that truly matters.