Heartbreak is not only the wolf at the door. It is also the ant in the cupboard, already inside the house and waiting only to be discovered.
Even in laughter the heart may ache, and the end of joy may be grief. (Proverbs 14:13 ESV)
Because biblical wisdom is so thoroughly committed to the world as it actually is, it is serially impatient with euphorias and tenaciously opposed to utopias.
Though it knows that God is good, biblical wisdom insists that life is not always so.
Even life suffused with trust in YHWH holds only the smallest handful of guarantees.
Hebrew גם—here translated ‘even’—is key to the reading of this proverb in its wider context. An insistence on literalism might render the word ‘also’ in English. That is, everybody knows that the heart often aches. Even a fool gets the obvious.
The person who would become wise understands that posturing about the obvious requires no discernment. It is in seeing past appearances that the wise person finds her strength, the discerning man his value.
The proverb instructs us that there is heartache also in the party, lurking beneath the family comedian’s forced grin. Yet wisdom takes one step farther in. There is also a quite genuine joy that simply precedes grief.
There is no immunity, no safe passage through life unmolested by its nagging vicissitudes.
Life for the wise brings both joy and grief. One does not inauthenticate the other.
The only folly is in pretending it isn’t so.
Even laughter paints in shades.
Canter Bridge 
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