Life is a Wedding Hall

There is a time for everything, a season for every activity under heaven. A time to be born and a time to die. A time to plant and a time to harvest. A time to kill and a time to heal. A time to tear down and a time to rebuild. A time to cry and a time to laugh. A time to grieve and a time to dance. A time to scatter stones and a time to gather stones. A time to embrace and a time to turn away. A time to search and a time to lose. A time to keep and a time to throw away. A time to tear and a time to mend. A time to be quiet and a time to speak up. A time to love and a time to hate. A time for war and a time for peace. Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

Once, a man came to an inn. In the evening, he heard sounds of music and dancing coming from the house next door. “Sounds like a wedding,” he thought to himself. But he heard the same sounds the next evening, and the next after that. So, he asked the inn keeper, “How can there be so many weddings in one family?” The inn keeper replied, “That house is a wedding hall. Today one family holds a wedding there; tomorrow another one will.”

Life is the same. People are always enjoying themselves. But some days it’s one person and other days it’s another. No single person can be happy all the time. When the Bible promises us joy, it is not necessarily offering us eternal bliss. We are to find joy in the midst of our trials. We are to search for wisdom in the midst of chaos. We are to look for God in the streets, in the faces of the ones we meet, in the sayings of the wise and in the babblings of the drunk.

To think that you are to be continuously happy will lead you to insanity or hypocrisy. If you believe that you are always to be happy, then you may end up turning to alcohol or drugs or even psychotic escapes in order to achieve that goal. If you believe that Christians are supposed to be constantly smiling, you will end up lying to your spiritual brothers and sisters when they ask “How are you?”

The key to joy is timing. The book of Ecclesiastes lists a few things that require perfect timing. What if you planted in September and attempted to reap in March? What if you laughed when your friends shared their burdens with you and cried when your lover said “I love you”? The secret is to find out what time it is and do the appropriate thing.