Nassau, Bahamas — The skies were ominously dark and the heavens opened. It was a downpour over the island, just hours after the death of the Reverend Myles Munroe, his wife, and seven others. As far as anyone in Nassau was concerned, it was the only appropriate weather this Monday morning.

“Someone said on the radio this morning that the angels were weeping,” Valencia remembered, clearly saddened not just by the deaths but by some of the reactions as well.

They didn’t get it, she explained to me. Angels weren’t weeping, she said, they were rejoicing over lives well lived. As choirs in heaven plead to God on behalf of those who are left behind, the homecoming that Christians pray for is a celebration worth celebrating. Whether Myles Munroe is in heaven already or will be soon, he lived for this: He lived to be with God for eternity.

It was as if Valencia was echoing the deceased. “We live in a disposable, ‘cast-off and throw-away’ society that has largely lost any real sense of permanence,” Munroe had written. “Ours is a world of expiration dates, limited shelf life, and planned obsolescence. Nothing is absolute.” The eternal is incomprehensibly foreign to too many.

To paraphrase both Munroe and Valencia: People, where is your hope?

I met Valencia on the grounds of the Catholic cathedral here. By her outpouring of love, you would have thought Munroe had been her pastor. In fact, he was the senior pastor of the Bahamas Faith Ministries International Fellowship, and he had died in a plane crash, on the way to a Christian leadership conference he was headlining. When I arrived at Nassau only hours later, the atmosphere was electric with shock, anguish, and tribute. And, yes, the rain poured down as if the heavens were weeping, or such seemed to be the meteorological commentary of the day.

The weather may have been a coincidence, but it was certainly poetic. Also an opportunity, perhaps, to teach the lessons Munroe had devoted his life to living, to compellingly relaying.

Poetic, too, perhaps, was the fact that he died with his wife at his side. Man, woman, and marriage were topics close to the heart of his ministry.

In a recent book, The Purpose and Power of Love and Marriage, Munroe had asked about marriage: “Where is this all headed? Where do we go from here? Will the institution of marriage survive the onslaught of negative reports, horror stories, and the proponents of radical society change who promote the idea that marriage has outlived its usefulness and value to human society?”

He contended: “It is my belief that no matter how advanced man may become in science, technology, systems, and knowledge, he can never improve on the foundational precepts of marriage as the bedrock of social development.”

He wrote this, of course, knowing that the trends of the time are skeptical of, if not hostile to, truth claims. As he put it: “Today, many question the viability and validity of marriage and openly wonder if it should continue to be esteemed as the bedrock of modern social development.” And yet he answered this question with confidence: “It is my conviction that marriage is such a good idea, only God could have thought of it.”

Now, while you may not agree with that, surely you do see the misery in our midst. Too many people don’t know what a successful marriage looks like, never having lived in one or in a community where they were common. And if they have experienced marriage, they may have very well have seen it end in utter failure, leaving deep, gaping wounds on parents and children. Many people today think marriage is unattainable and even undesirable; they reject it or seek to rework it as something it is not — even while so many desperately want love. How do we get to that good?

Of course, if you Google Munroe’s name, you’ll come across headlines marking his death with the likes of “Myles Munroe: Preacher who outraged many with his views on women and gays.” While I can’t pretend to be an expert on everything the man said or wrote while on this earth, my crash course — I was introduced to his work only the morning after his death — has primarily been an immersion in common-sense practical and cultural thinking. In the most general and confident terms, he looked at man, woman, and child and saw a precious complementarity and bond. In the gift of marriage, he saw graces beyond human strength alone. He saw in the human person tremendous potential for creation. And so he gave thanks to God, to a Creator who knows us better than we know ourselves, and who had a plan in mind when he created us as men and women.

We’re human. We have needs and desires and influences and habits and confusion and pain and fear. And how often do we and our environment compound the pain and confusion and fear? But settling for something that cannot fulfill will not be a help to human flourishing. Myles Munroe did his part to be a servant and to give that faithful and practical help we should all aspire to offer, ever more every day.

The truth is, we can’t afford to be a post-marriage culture. People need and desire what works, what brings us closer to the fulfillment of who we were created to be. What does that look like? Only God knows in full, but He did give us some basics to work with Him on.

Talking about men and women and marriage and children is often controversial today, but it is also crucial. As an opening video for the ecumenical Humanum conference convening in Rome this week — with a welcome from Pope Francis — puts it, “The God who created the universe created human sexuality.” One speaker says it quite bluntly: Man and woman “fit.”

In an interview that has become more popular since his death than it was when he was alive, Munroe talked about emptying oneself out in sacrificial love for God and others: “Don’t die old, die empty. That’s the goal of life. Go to the cemetery and disappoint the graveyard.”

And be not afraid, as has been said, to pursue and protect and defend and nourish truth about the good life, about a life that makes sense and helps us fruitfully flourish together.

The Reverend Myles Munroe emptied himself in loving service, echoing the words of an eternal wisdom and design. Will we, too? Will we welcome and encourage and celebrate and protect those who do?

— Kathryn Jean Lopez is senior fellow at the National Review Institute, editor-at-large of National Review Online, and founding director of Catholic Voices USA.