Blind Date

Blind Date

Freshly shaven, wrinkle free he is ready
He has packed her favorites
All that is needed for the perfect
impromptu meal complete and ready to go

Will she be there on time?
Will she recognize me in this stupid suit?
The shoes new and tight on his feet

He arrives and she is waiting for him already
Patient while he sets out foods for her delight
Will she like that he brought fresh figs?

Then he kneels and lays aside the cane
Feeling the headstone and tracing the letters
as if he can still touch her by touching her name
that is written on the headstone

Rachel!, My Rachel!, How I miss you my wife!
Tears flow like the River Jordan into blue cloth,
as Jacob weeps for the mother of his children


author's notes:
Graves are for the living, when we remember our dead,
we remember who we are. A beautiful account of this
is in the death of the Biblical Jacob's wife Rachel.


When Rachel died, Jacob and his family were only a short distance
from Bethlehem. Yet he did not bring his most beloved wife Rachel
into that town to be buried, nor did he bring her home with him to
Hebron, but he buried her in the middle of nowhere, on the side of the road.
Why did he do this? Jacob foresaw that in the future, following the
destruction of the First Temple in 423 BCE, the Jews would be driven
from their homes and forced into exile in Babylon. On their dispirited
march they would as on this very road, and they would cry to Rachel.
They would take courage from her presence,
and she would beseech God on their behalf.

The prophet Jeremiah, who lived through those events,
describes what happened (Jeremiah 31:14):

A voice is heard on high,
Wailing, bitterly crying.
Rachel weeps for her children
She refuses to be consoled
For they are gone.

Jeremiah also tells us God's response:

"Restrain your voice from weeping,
"Hold back your eyes from their tears.
"For your work has its reward and your children shall return to their border."



Rachel gave up her place next to her husband a second time when,
instead of a burial spot in the family plot in Hebron, she accepted a lonely burial,
on the side of a deserted road. She did this in order to be there for her children
who would live tens of centuries later

Rachel is the quintessential Jewish mother,
sacrificing for our well-being and security. This feeling of limitless love and
motherly concern is what draws people to her tomb to this day.

In addition, Rachel herself was childless for many years before
she was granted children. Women who are suffering from infertility,
in particular, travel to her tomb to pray.



Samuel Butler-
It is better to have loved and lost than never to have lost at all.

1 Thessalonians 4:16-18-
For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout,
with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God:
and the dead in Christ shall rise first:
Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together
with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air:
and so shall we ever be with the Lord.
Wherefore comfort one another with these words

Matthew 20:34-
Jesus had compassion on them and touched their eyes.
Immediately they received their sight and followed him.