"CAVES AND GRAVES"

     When Sarah died, Abraham bought the field and cave of Machpelah for a place to bury her.  When Abraham died he was buried in that cave alongside Sarah.  When his oldest son, Isaac and his wife Rebekah died, they were buried in that cave with Abraham and Sarah.  When Leah, the first wife of Isaac’s son Jacob, died she was buried in that cave.  Even though Jacob died in Egypt, his sons brought him back to the cave at Machpelah to be buried.  Those were the only persons buried in that cave.  It became a lodestone for the Israelites.  Their religion was called “the faith of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”.  They trusted the covenant promises God made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  They worshiped the “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”.  The cave at Machpelah can still be seen today.

A hundred years ago my grandfather bought three cemetery lots, each with four graves.  He buried his father and mother in the graves on the northwest corner.  Later, he would bury two of his own infant children in graves at that location.  He and his wife were buried there.  His two sons and their wives are buried there.  Just as no one else was buried at Machpelah, no one else will be buried in those three lots.  The great grandchildren and their progeny have scattered to more than half dozen states.  For all of them, those graves in that place are the stake that establishes their origin, their clan, their heritage.