Ecclesiastes 7:2-4

We spend most of our energy arranging life so the house of feasting stays open and the house of mourning stays shut. Qoheleth turns the map around. He does not say that sorrow is good, or that laughter is a sin — only that the house of mourning teaches what the house of feasting cannot. Stand at a graveside and the pretenses fall away. We remember that this is the end of all mankind, ours included, and something in us grows quieter, more honest, and — strangely — more able to love.

Notice that the wisdom here is not morbid. It is not a summons to gloom, and it does not pretend the sorrow will be explained. It simply says that a face marked by grief has been somewhere real, and that the heart behind it has been made glad in a way cheerfulness alone never manages — not the giddy gladness of distraction, but the settled gladness of a person who has stopped hiding from the truth.

We would rather not go in. We would rather keep the mirth going a little longer. But the mourners, it turns out, are the ones who see clearly — who know that everything we love we will one day set down, and who therefore hold it now with open and grateful hands.

Wolterstorff, who buried his own son, found the secret hidden in this text: every lament is a love-song. We grieve only what we first loved; the tears are proof of the treasure. That is why the house of mourning is wise — it is love with nowhere left to go. And it is why we are not alone in it: the Man of Sorrows entered that house ahead of us, and wept at a friend's tomb (John 11:35) before he opened it.