Biblical faith is not escapist. It does not advocate the evacuation of the mind in the face of unpleasant facts, the embrace of fantasy in the face of a harsh reality… the healing of our pain of which the Bible speaks requires us to confront reality rather than to seek to escape from it. One of these realities is death. It invites us to embrace that reality rather than to push it away… It invites us to allow the fact of death, looked squarely in the eye, to do its work in us. It invites us to allow the fact of death, looked squarely in the eye, to do its work in us. It invites us to pursue the question of death to the end rather than to pursue joy, and to help us to accept this implausible invitation, it claims that to make joy our focus is only in any case to know death now and also forever.
Provan, I. (2001) Ecclesiastes/Song of Songs: The NIV Application Commentary, 169
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