“Then Moses, the servant of the LORD, died there in the land of Moab, at the Lord’s command. He was buried in a valley in the land of Moab, opposite Beth-peor, but no one knows his burial place to this day.” – Deuteronomy 34:5-6

Note: The Hebrew text can be read that the LORD buried Moses after his death.

“Lay it down, Moses. You have walked and climbed
and spoken and shouted and struck and fed
and led for many, many years. Lay it down, old friend.
Your limbs have carried you, and now you rest.”

In view of promises that he had spoken, he
gently took a breath, and let it go. Unequaled
prophet of the once enslaved, now free,
his spirit spread its wings in eager flight.

They mourned him thirty days down in the valley,
never knowing where his flesh, at last at rest,
remained. Did Joshua ascend the slopes to dig,
or did an angel’s hands move dust for Moses’ clay?

In decades past, they’d panicked when he’d disappeared
upon the rumbling heights. With Moses’ final song
still shivering in their ears, they wept and grieved,
and if they climbed, they never found the prophet’s grave.

Today you’ll find a monument to Moses at
the summit of Mount Nebo, a shrine to mark
a grave at Nabi Musa near the road to Jericho,
but Moses’ grave was hidden from the folk he’d led.

They mourned this time without an idol’s aid,
not even the small comfort of a tended grave.
The leadership had passed unto another generation.
Was that enough to satisfy their grief?

Or was it simply that they’d seen, at last,
through passing of the years, that Moses’ legacy
was they, themselves, the once enslaved now free,
their lives his monument less brittle than the stones.

Though Moses died, his people lived. Though Moses died,
his people found a home. Though Moses died,
another generation rose. Though Moses died,
and though I die, the grace of God lives on.

A poem/prayer based on Deuteronomy 34:1-12, the Revised Common Lectionary Alternate First Reading for Year A, Proper 25 (30).

The image is Moses Sees the Promised Land from Afar, as in Numbers 27:12 by James Tissot (before 1903) – http://www.wcg.org/images/tissot/tissland.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7154558.