Looking Back, Looking Forward

Our Life is a short time in expectation, a time in which sadness and joy kiss each other at every moment. There is a quality of sadness that pervades all the moments of our life. It seems that there is no such thing as a clear-cut pure joy, but that even in the most happy moments of our existence we sense a tinge of sadness. In every satisfaction, there is an awareness of limitations. In every success, there is a fear of jealousy. Behind every smile, there is a tear.In every embrace, there is loneliness. In every friendship, distance. And in all forms of light, there is the knowlegde of surrounding darkness......but this intimate experience in which every bit of life is touched by a bit of death can point us beyond the limits of our existence. It can do so by making us look forward in expectation to the day when our hearts will be filled with perfect joy, a joy that no one shall take away from us. Finally, nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our life time;therefore we must be saved by hope.Nothing which is true and beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuos,can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love.