Buried Alive
Buried Alive
Have you ever seen a show or movie where someone has been buried alive? Or maybe, like one of the Sherlock Holmes movies, the villain took some kind of injection to lower his heart rate so he could appear dead and come back to life. Some people have a legitimate fear of being buried alive called taphophobia (if you didn’t know that, neither did I. Thanks, Google). I’m not sure it should be much of a fear in this day and age in the way that they process and prepare for burial. Or being cremated. Pretty sure I’m more concerned about those than being buried alive.
Not to get too morbid, but I’m wondering what are some of the things we’ve buried alive in the soil of our hearts thinking that we’ve fully taken care of them. Only to realize later that the weeds of those things are pushing up through the dirt. Only to realize that the thing we once pronounced dead is unearthing itself. Only to realize later that we buried it without fully checking the pulse.
Or maybe it’s something different. Maybe we felt a faint heartbeat, and instead of letting it die we resuscitated it. Maybe we’ve kept that thing alive because we like or even love the feelings we get from it. Maybe we feel justified in our anger when we think about that situation or person because they wronged us. Keeping the hurt alive is what keeps you resenting both the situation and your feelings from the situation.
We bury things that are no longer alive. And this is where the healing starts. Wounds don’t need burying or hiding, they need healing. An open wound isn’t a reason to crawl in a grave; it’s a reason to call in the physician. Or better yet, the Great Physician.
Bandaids on a gunshot wound don’t work. You’re hiding it at best and preventing healing at worst. Hiding it allows infection to come in and that hinders healing. Infection also leads to other symptoms.
Having the sniffles isn’t a sign that you’re dying - it’s a sign that you’re fighting something. Symptoms are simply indications that something is attacking you, not that death is overtaking you. But we can’t medicate the symptoms alone and think that no more work needs to be done. This is just hiding and not healing.
If you’re not dealing with it you’re not healing it.
When you hide the hurt you can’t heal the hurt. What’s hidden won’t heal. What’s buried alive doesn’t always die. Healing happens with exposure and disclosure, not concealing or covering. You may get by it but you won’t get past it.
If you want it healed it has to be revealed.
Jesus didn’t become sin and demolish death and disease so that you could hide it, cover it, or medicate the symptoms. Jesus became sin to abolish what sin tried to accomplish. Not so you could medicate it and keep it alive. Medicating symptoms is simply surface-level solutions. And these are short-term at best.
Jesus put sin to death and the grave to destruction. His wounds heal ours. The Begotten Son who knew no sin became sin so that we might become the righteousness of God - not so we could self-righteously keep dead things alive. Not so we could hide or cover our hurts but to expose them to the healing only He can bring.
Healed hurts can become the seeds from which a harvest grows.
So if you are going to bury something, bury seeds so God can help you make them grow (John 12:24). When you bury seeds it’s called planting. It’s called sowing. And sowing always precedes reaping.
Have you ever seen a show or movie where someone has been buried alive? Or maybe, like one of the Sherlock Holmes movies, the villain took some kind of injection to lower his heart rate so he could appear dead and come back to life. Some people have a legitimate fear of being buried alive called taphophobia (if you didn’t know that, neither did I. Thanks, Google). I’m not sure it should be much of a fear in this day and age in the way that they process and prepare for burial. Or being cremated. Pretty sure I’m more concerned about those than being buried alive.
Not to get too morbid, but I’m wondering what are some of the things we’ve buried alive in the soil of our hearts thinking that we’ve fully taken care of them. Only to realize later that the weeds of those things are pushing up through the dirt. Only to realize that the thing we once pronounced dead is unearthing itself. Only to realize later that we buried it without fully checking the pulse.
Or maybe it’s something different. Maybe we felt a faint heartbeat, and instead of letting it die we resuscitated it. Maybe we’ve kept that thing alive because we like or even love the feelings we get from it. Maybe we feel justified in our anger when we think about that situation or person because they wronged us. Keeping the hurt alive is what keeps you resenting both the situation and your feelings from the situation.
We bury things that are no longer alive. And this is where the healing starts. Wounds don’t need burying or hiding, they need healing. An open wound isn’t a reason to crawl in a grave; it’s a reason to call in the physician. Or better yet, the Great Physician.
Bandaids on a gunshot wound don’t work. You’re hiding it at best and preventing healing at worst. Hiding it allows infection to come in and that hinders healing. Infection also leads to other symptoms.
Having the sniffles isn’t a sign that you’re dying - it’s a sign that you’re fighting something. Symptoms are simply indications that something is attacking you, not that death is overtaking you. But we can’t medicate the symptoms alone and think that no more work needs to be done. This is just hiding and not healing.
If you’re not dealing with it you’re not healing it.
When you hide the hurt you can’t heal the hurt. What’s hidden won’t heal. What’s buried alive doesn’t always die. Healing happens with exposure and disclosure, not concealing or covering. You may get by it but you won’t get past it.
If you want it healed it has to be revealed.
Jesus didn’t become sin and demolish death and disease so that you could hide it, cover it, or medicate the symptoms. Jesus became sin to abolish what sin tried to accomplish. Not so you could medicate it and keep it alive. Medicating symptoms is simply surface-level solutions. And these are short-term at best.
Jesus put sin to death and the grave to destruction. His wounds heal ours. The Begotten Son who knew no sin became sin so that we might become the righteousness of God - not so we could self-righteously keep dead things alive. Not so we could hide or cover our hurts but to expose them to the healing only He can bring.
Healed hurts can become the seeds from which a harvest grows.
So if you are going to bury something, bury seeds so God can help you make them grow (John 12:24). When you bury seeds it’s called planting. It’s called sowing. And sowing always precedes reaping.
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Excellent Word. True freedom is found only in Jesus.