This spring and early summer have been full of many weddings for me. Though it’s certainly crammed an already full schedule, I’m not complaining. There are some events that are my absolute favorite to do, and weddings – particularly of former students – rank among the highest. Last Saturday I was waiting for the start of one of them, and the grandpa of the groom came walking up to me with a question.
“So which do you prefer doing – weddings or funerals?”
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At first, I thought this was all the set up for a joke about how they are the same event – signaling the end of someone’s life, either physically or metaphorically. But it wasn’t. He was being serious as he went on to tell me, “I’ve done a ministry with older men for a decade now, and I just really enjoy doing the celebrations of their lives.” Fair enough.
Personally though, since the majority of my clientele are former students, I much prefer marrying them as opposed to burying them. He seemed to understand that perspective. But the whole conversation got me thinking about one of the funerals I did for an elderly man, when the circularity of life hit me hard:
Like all of us, he had started his life totally dependent upon the care of others. He grew into a man before ending his life the same way it had begun – totally dependent upon the care of others. Circularity.
This man had left his small, rural Indiana hometown for the lights of the big city. After a successful career in finance, he retired, returned to his hometown, where he purchased and renovated his childhood home. Circularity.
The cancer doctor who helped treat him actually ended up being the child of a former elementary school friend of his. Circularity.
He had told his loved ones that some of his greatest childhood memories were playing out in his big backyard as the sun would set behind the trees. He passed away in a room whose big glass window looked out over that very yard, towards those very trees. Circularity.
From a faith perspective, he had grown up going to church and was a faithful Sunday School attender. As life got in the way during adulthood, he had strayed from the church, only to return to a simple life of childlike faith. Circularity.
I’d say it was funny that such a topic was on my mind as I read the final few verses of the chapter I used for last week’s message from the book of Judges, but I know better than to think it was coincidence. Here’s what God tells us at the end of Judges 7:
24 Gideon sent messengers throughout the hill country of Ephraim, saying, “Come down against the Midianites and seize the waters of the Jordan ahead of them as far as Beth Barah.”
So all the men of Ephraim were called out and they seized the waters of the Jordan as far as Beth Barah. 25 They also captured two of the Midianite leaders, Oreb and Zeeb. They killed Oreb at the rock of Oreb, and Zeeb at the winepress of Zeeb. They pursued the Midianites and brought the heads of Oreb and Zeeb to Gideon, who was by the Jordan.
Useless, forgotten names, and obscure geographical references, right? Perhaps to those who come to the Scriptures only expecting to find convenient moral lessons and an extensive historical rolodex. But for those of us who understand that ALL scripture is God-breathed and useful, we shouldn’t be shocked to find Gideon’s (and God’s) enemies meeting their fate at “the rock of Oreb” or “the winepress of Zeeb.” Why?
The first time we meet Gideon in this account he is hiding in a winepress, cowering in fear (6:11) before his people’s oppressors. And in verse 21 of that same chapter 6, God first promises Gideon He will be with Him by devouring a sacrifice in flames…at a “rock.” Rock to rock. Winepress to winepress. Circularity.
Why do I mention all this or find significance in it? I don’t know for a fact, but I’ve got a pretty good guess that many of you are swimming in it right now – you are exhausted, frustrated, unfulfilled at times, maybe even disillusioned.
Why am I here?
What’s the point of this?
I’m so insignificant in the grand scheme of things.
Maybe you feel lost, drifting, spiraling, or languishing in futility.
In the quiet ache of futility and the heavy silence of meaninglessness, it’s easy to believe the story is unraveling. But God is not absent in the chaos—He is weaving it. Even when we can’t trace the thread, He is pulling everything toward wholeness. The unanswered prayers, the detours, the long nights—they’re not wasted. They’re chapters in a larger narrative, one not about us, one where nothing is lost and everything is being brought full circle. What feels like an ending may well be the beginning of redemption. And in the hands of a faithful God, even the broken pieces will one day make sense.
Circularity.