Status Updates From Wise Counsel

“I love to have a letter from you now and then . . . The remembrance of past times revived and gave me pleasure. We began when you were a lad and I a curate and we have gone on till you are grown into a doctor and I am dignified with the ridle of rector. Our friendship, now grown old, will I hope continue to the end, whatever changes may yet await us; yea, and subsist and flourish in a better world.”

“There is something fascinating in grief: though we feel it hurts our peace . . . when it is great, and long continued, it threatens the very root of our usefulness, we are apt to indulge it, and to brood over sorrow till it gives a tincture to the whole frame of our spirit, and, perhaps, makes a lodgment in us, too deep to be removed.”

Newton, the pastor of grief and dreams.

“He [God] gives us so to speak 96 or 97 blessings in hand, 3 or 4 he bids us wait for, but because we have not the whole hundred and all at once, we forget the value of the rest, we grieve and despond; the sun shines upon us in vain.” - John Newton