Ecclesiastes 7:2-4
“It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of every man; the living should take this to heart. Sorrow is better than laughter, because a sad face is good for the heart. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of pleasure.”
Vanity Fair will keep a person busy for as long as they allow it, running circles in a hamster-wheel of indulgences. It is a house of clowns and painted faces, noise, and distractions that warp reality in a feverish hall of mirrors. Empty pleasures are pumped into the hollow ache of the heart. But, “laughter can conceal deep sadness and a smile can mask grief,” the proverb says. In Vanity Fair pleasure and pain blur together and we experience the incredible numbing of life.
Don’t even think religion is an antidote to Vanity Fair. Jesus wanted nothing to do with the Pharisee’s faith—dripping with latex paint on the outside, but full of sour rotted flesh on the inside. Religion just straightens tombstones.
By contrast, there is earnestness in the countenance of grief. Grief has stared hard at reality. The lamenting heart pierces straight through the veneer of self-interest and flimsy religion. Neither is it hampered by layers of social control, check valves or press secretaries. There is no more scrim between the world and the heart’s lion-roar of loss.
One psychologist has said “pain is the universal truth.” Pain anchors people. It reveals our true state without God; we may try to hide in the illusion Vanity Fair creates, but we cannot escape the jagged rocks of suffering and pain—the interminable effects of being severed from Life.
Let us weep for our destruction. In our brokenness and grief we are one step closer to understanding the severity of the situation. The things we trusted in have blown apart and we are drowning; the charade of sin is over. In our abject failure we find the tears to cry out for someone to rescue us. In this, “the heart of the wise is in the house of mourning.” Those who have a sober assessment of life have an acute awareness of their emptiness without God, and their salvation and fulfillment in him.
Tags: sin, hope, addictions, religion, reality, savior, brokenness, mourning, grief, pleasure, loss, realistic
