One night in a bad hotel

Tim Keller, in his comments on Jesus' first miracle of changing water into wine (Encounters With Jesus), asks why this should be his first miracle? "Why would Jesus decide that a quintissential signifier of all he is about would be to keep a party going? Why would his first miracle...use supernatural power to bring a lot of great wine to sustain the festivities?" He answers it like this:

In verse 9 we are introduced to the "master of the banquet."...It was his job to call people to celebrate and to make sure the conditions for that celebration were all in place....When Jesus turns water into wine and saves the day, do you see what Jesus is saying? He is saying, as it were, I am the true master of the banquet. I am the Lord of the Feast.

...He is saying, "I'm going to suffer. Yes, there's going to be self-denial. Yes, there's going to be sacrifice...But it's all a means to an end, which is festival joy! It's all in order to bring about resurrection and the new heavens and new earth. The end of evil and death and tears.

...At the end the reality will be so astonishing, the joy will be so incredible, the fulfilment will be so amazing that the most miserable life will feel (as St. Teresa of Avila was reputed to have said) "like one night in a bad hotel."

Jesus Christ says, "I am the Lord of the Feast. In the end, I come to bring joy. That's the reason my calling card, my first miracle, is to set everyone laughing."

This theme is touched on in a 10 minute podcast on The Gospel Coalition website (see, Why "God didn't ordain that tragedy' is terrible news). Matt Chandler- who was diagnosed with cancer- talks about how if all he's thinking about is, "I don't get to walk my daughter down the aisle, that's devastating. If I'm thinking a billion years from now, then I can join with Paul and you know, me lying on the floor vomiting, that's 'light and momentary'."

For our light and momentary troubles 

are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. 

So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but what is unseen, 

since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

2 Corinthians 4.17,18