It can also be rather amusing. Several such Christians, who were converted at times of revival blessing, have told me that one of the questions they used to ask each other was: 'is there a wake anywhere tonight?'
It's not that they hoped people would die; it's that they just could not get enough worship, or opportunities to gather together around God's word. And in the culture in which wakes involved worship at the home of the deceased, and would frequently include the offering of several prayers and the singing of several psalms, death itself became an instrument of life to such converts.
I don't know if people look forward to wakes in the same way now, or for the same reasons. It is certainly the case that the level of spirituality at such gatherings can vary considerably. I have attended several services of worship over the last few weeks in connection with deaths throughout the island. At some of them the singing was inspiring and breathtaking; at others it was virtually non-existent.
If the quality and caliber of the singing can be a measure of the spiritual interest of those who attend services of worship, then things differ widely from wake to wake and from funeral to funeral. Sometimes - as happened recently in our congregation - we bury a lovely Christian lady, whom we know to have gone home with her Lord, and the worship is rich, meaningful and triumphant. At other times we bury people with little church connection, and the worship can be shallow, with very little input from those who have gathered.
Let me say at this point that I take nothing for granted. Our Christian values and heritage have been so eroded over the past number of years that I assume little, and expect little. In particular, given the rate of secularization in our island culture over the past decade, I do not assume that the Christian influence on our society in the near future will be anything like it was in the past.
I say this particularly in connection with funerals. These have always been the preserve of the local churches, but I am aware of sweeping changes that have taken place throughout the British Isles, so that this is not necessarily the case any more.
Even in our island, we have seen a measure of change.When I came to Lewis in 1995, we were at the tail-end of a culture which saw funerals conducted from homes, with a simple act of family worship marking the rite of passage with which we buried our dead.
Now, with very few exceptions, the funeral service is conducted from our church buildings, with all the attendant advantages of having accommodation for those who wish to pay their respects and express their sympathy. Nothing was more frustrating in the past - whatever the excitable young Christians of the revival made of wakes - than to conduct a service of worship in a home where only a handful in the immediate vicinity of the minister could hear what was going on, and where more were excluded than included anyway.
So the transition to the church building has been welcome. But that raises a different question. What do we do once we are in the church building? My philosophy has always been that we do exactly the same as we did in the home: we conduct a simple act of worship, which includes singing God's praise, reading God's word, and calling on God's name.
And that is what I can no longer assume. Our contemporary society has made religion peripheral to the disposal of our dead. As recent, well-publicized funerals in our nation have shown, more deference is given to the favourite football teams of the deceased than to the God in whose house the mourners have gathered. Such funerals may be held in churches, but they are not acts of worship.
Obviously, associations with football, music or some other interest make funerals very meaningful for the family. But the way we frame and arrange our funeral services is an indication of the approach we take to death. And if our way of dealing with death is to make it a celebration of life, and to ground it in what was enjoyed and achieved here, then we have secularized something that is sacred and awesome.
Which is why, in the simplicity of New Testament Christianity, I consider it enough for us simply to bow our heads in worship when it comes to these moments of final parting. It is altogether fitting that we should say 'The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord'.
So, whether the deceased was an attender at church or not, interested in the Gospel or not, our churches are the most fitting and appropriate places at which we ought to deal with the one issue that levels us all. And apart from the Gospel of a dying and risen Jesus, our words become meaningless and empty anyway.
I hope it will continue; I hope that in spite of the secularizing tendencies all around us, that we will not allow our wakes or funerals to degenerate into acts of showmanship, full of eulogy, reminiscence and laughter. The house of mirth is for another day; better, the Good Book says, to be in the house of mourning.
Which brings me back to the singing. Singing is an important element of our worship. When the minister says 'Let us sing to God's praise', he does not mean, 'Keep quiet while only the Christians here sing'. He calls us all to open our mouths, and to lift up our voices in adoration of the God in whose hands our lives are.
So I want to encourage people to attend wakes and funerals. And I want to encourage them to sing when they do. That may mean ensuring an adequate supply of psalm-books or other items of praise. It was never needed before, when our Gaelic culture disposed of our dead with services that naturally employed Gaelic psalm-singing.
In that context, no wonder wakes were popular. The emotion of the moment could hardly have been expressed better than with the passion and sensation that attends (good) Gaelic psalm-singing.
But that is no longer the case. We can't assume that the people know Psalm 23. It may be a simple act of family worship, but those who gather to our wakes and funerals need to have helps for singing if the service is to be meaningful at all. As churches, we need to work hard at making sure that those who enter our doors because death has brought them there, are able to enter into the act of worship.
And who knows; perhaps these moments, in which people are exposed to the Word of God for a short period of time, might lead to the realization that death need not have the last word after all.

iaind@backfreechurch.co.uk