Loving the feast even more

“Summertime and the livin’ is easy,” the old Gershwin show tune goes. At least that’s how August is supposed to feel as we head to the vacation rental house in our beloved Hilton Head Island, S.C. It’s our Cana, the house of feasting.

Family gathers. Grandchildren run and jump and play with an energy that if it could be harnessed might make the Strait of Hormuz irrelevant. Much as I cherish those kids, all seven of them, I think my greatest joy is watching my own sons and daughter transformed into parents who delight in their children and love them so well. It’s the sound of covenant faithfulness and life is good.

But I’ve noticed something since my father died in August 2023. Hardly a month goes by without another friend learning to live in a world without a father, a wife, or a husband.

That’s pushed me to seek to understand one of Solomon’s strangest morsels of wisdom in the Book of Ecclesiastes: “It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting.” Better? You want to take issue: Surely weddings are preferred to funerals, birthdays to memorial services, celebrations to grief, vacations to shattering sadness. You’ll not find Scripture romanticizing death. To the contrary, Paul calls death the “last enemy to be destroyed.” So we can’t pretend cemeteries are victories. We weep at funerals because something terrible has happened. Sin marred God’s good creation by bringing death into it.

Yet Solomon does not back down—not because mourning is more pleasant, but because it is more instructive. The house of mourning, Solomon continues, “is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart.” I think we all know intuitively that the house of mourning teaches lessons the house of feasting cannot. Theologian Matthew Henry calls the house of mourning “the wise man’s school.” I love the phrase, because it strips away illusions and reminds us that our calendars are shorter than we imagine, that today’s conversation may be the last.

Yet Henry points to something I’d overlooked: Jesus visited both houses. He rejoiced at the wedding at Cana and He stood outside the tomb of Lazarus at Bethany and wept. That seems to describe the Christian life better than almost anything I know: We move from Cana to Bethany, from laughter to tears, from wedding tables to funeral homes, sometimes in the same week.

Summer has carried me back through some of the most defining losses of my life. Three decades ago, our daughter Katherine lived only 3½ months after being born with Trisomy 18. That Fourth of July we spent planning a funeral yet learning the most enduring lessons about the value of human life. She remains one of God’s greatest gifts to us.

Three years ago, my father died. The funeral service we put together included among other Scriptures Psalm 23 and John 14. With the help of my friend Albert Mohler, I imagined I was preparing a service for others. Looking back, I think those Scriptures have been preparing me.

Preparing me, perhaps, to stop worrying so much about finding the right words. In my experience, grieving people seldom need explanations. They need company. Looking back on my own losses, I remember very little of what people said. But I do remember vividly that they came.

Oddly enough, the house of mourning has not made me love the house of feasting less. It has made ordinary joys seem less ordinary. I’ve learned to savor moments like a granddaughter strapped in her car seat “accidentally” dropping piggy for Papa to rescue for her. I’ll return piggy, but not before interrogating the toy about why she keeps jumping out of Phoebe’s hands like that!

The house of feasting gives us foretastes. The house of mourning teaches us longing. But Solomon’s two houses are not the whole story. The gospel introduces a third. “Let not your hearts be troubled,” Jesus tells the disciples at the beginning of John chapter 14. “In my Father’s house are many rooms.” Neither the house of feasting nor the house of mourning is the final destination.

Even Psalm 23 traces the same journey. The Lord prepares a table before us in the presence of our enemies. We walk through the valley of the shadow of death. At last: “I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”