Carry the memory, but don’t live in the shrine.

Many years ago, a Pastor I knew died far too young, despite lengthy prayers for his recovery from churches across the area. His congregation was devastated. During his illness, prophetic words declaring his healing had been placed around the church walls, alongside photographs of him—declarations of faith that God would restore him.

He wasn’t healed. He died.

Yet several months later, the prophecies and pictures remained on the walls. What had begun as declarations of faith had become a shrine—a monument to loss, to what could have been, to a future that never arrived. Though it was painful for everyone, the shrine had to be dismantled. Life had to go on.

The Pastor is remembered with honour. But the shrine is no more.

On my phone, I have many photos of dear family and friends who have died. I look at them often—sometimes laughing, sometimes crying at the memories they stir. But those photos don’t stop me from taking new ones. In fact, I have far more pictures of people who are alive than of the precious people no longer in my life.

That’s the difference. Memory allows room for the present. A shrine only has room for the past.

Let me continue with these verses.

“Sarah lived to be a hundred and twenty-seven years old. She died at Kiriath Arba (that is, Hebron) in the land of Canaan, and Abraham went to mourn for Sarah and to weep over her. Then Abraham rose from beside his dead wife and spoke to the Hittites. He said, “I am a foreigner and stranger among you. Sell me some property for a burial site here so I can bury my dead.” (Genesis 23 v 1-4)

Reading again v4 in the KJV, “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.”

Several years ago, I conducted a funeral for a certain church member. I remember the day we helped him get ready to move from his house to a flat. I had never been to his house before and was taken aback by its state. However, when I went into his bedroom, I realised why the years had not been kind to him and how he had let himself go, living with no purpose. Hanging outside the wardrobe was his wife’s dress; other clothes were gathering dust on a chair. His wife had died a few years previously, but it was clear he had never let her go. He could not move on. Grief had consumed him. He had stopped living life to the full. The past had become a prison, and he was wasting away inside it.

Sarah was Abraham’s failure: calling her his sister because of fear instead of trusting God.

Sarah was Abraham’s brokenness: he would be the father of many, but he couldn’t keep his own family together and had to say goodbye to Hagar and Ishmael.

Sarah was Abraham’s success: At 90, she bore him a son.

But now Sarah has died.

Abraham mourned for her.

He wept for her.

This was right. This was necessary. This was healthy.

Then Abraham stood up, declared she was dead and became determined to bury her out of his sight.

Notice the progression: mourn, weep, then rise and move forward. Abraham understood that while grief has its season, clinging to what is gone will drain the life from us. If we refuse to bury the past, it will bury us instead. We become like that church member—surrounded by what once was, unable to embrace what could be, slowly diminishing in the shadow of memory.

Let us not be locked up in the past, whether in failure, brokenness or even success.

Those times are gone now. They are dead.

We know how to mourn and weep. These are gifts that honour what we’ve lost.

But we must also learn how to bury things out of our sight. If we don’t, we cease to live genuinely. We become haunted by yesterday, unable to step into today. The past, left unburied, becomes a weight that crushes our purpose, our joy, and our future. God calls us not merely to survive in the grip of what was, but to live fully in what is and what is yet to come.