Weddings and Funerals

I have had a string of weddings and funerals in the past month and a half. In fact, this week I had the privilege of celebrating a marriage and grieving a death just three days apart. The contrast is quite stark between these two human events. Weddings, typically, are much like a birth. They are the beginning of a new thing that the Bible refers to as "one flesh," and they come with much anticipation and hope as this couple looks forward to their future together. The ups and downs that are sure to come don't carry much weight in the presence of marital bliss. There will be time enough to deal with conflict and crisis. But in this moment, celebration is the only thought.

And then there are funerals which too is a normal human event. And while we sometimes call them a "celebration of life," they are still times of grieving our loss. We all will be eulogized one day, and yet the arrival of death still feels like an assault on life. Rather than the future, it is the past that occupies our thoughts in these moments. "What if" is a more common train of thought as we pour through the pages of our history with our dearly departed. Just like a marriage, death goes with us into our future. It marks us for the rest of our lives as we hold on to the love we had for our friend, all the while stumbling towards our own last good bye.

In both of these human events we find ourselves. We find our greatest hopes and ambitions for the days that are yet to come, and we find our fears and doubts about what lies on the other side. We experience our own beauty in the face of our beloved, and we acknowledge our own brokenness as we pay our respects for another who has gone on before us.

And so we live, somewhere between celebration and grief.