Lesson from a Poet
“Thomas Carlyle (died 1881) was a great English poet. He loved his wife, she loved him, and helped him in his career. But she fell ill with cancer and was bedridden, and Thomas was so busy writing that he rarely made time to stay at her bedside. But she did not complain.
After she died, it rained heavily on the day of her burial. After the ceremony at the graveside, Thomas went home, went up into his wife’s bedroom, and sat beside her bed. He found her diary, and read this entry: ‘Yesterday Thomas spent an hour with me and it was like being in Heaven. I love him so.’ His heart quaked. On the next page he read: ‘I have listened all day to hear his steps in the hall, but now it is late and I guess he won’t come today.’
Thomas threw the diary to the floor and ran back to the cemetery through pouring rain. Friends found him face down in the mud on the new grave, weeping, saying over and over again, ‘If only I had known!’
Woody Allen is right: ‘Ninety percent of life is just showing up.’”
“The most precious gift you give to someone you love is time. Where you choose to spend it when you are free is the surest indicator of what and whom you love.
Time is a precious commodity because no one can give you anymore of it; no one can give you a 25th hour in any day or replenish the past time you have spent.
Except God. For He lives in eternity, and He can multiply our little loaves and fishes of time. But only the ones we give away to Him.”
~Peter Kreeft
After she died, it rained heavily on the day of her burial. After the ceremony at the graveside, Thomas went home, went up into his wife’s bedroom, and sat beside her bed. He found her diary, and read this entry: ‘Yesterday Thomas spent an hour with me and it was like being in Heaven. I love him so.’ His heart quaked. On the next page he read: ‘I have listened all day to hear his steps in the hall, but now it is late and I guess he won’t come today.’
Thomas threw the diary to the floor and ran back to the cemetery through pouring rain. Friends found him face down in the mud on the new grave, weeping, saying over and over again, ‘If only I had known!’
Woody Allen is right: ‘Ninety percent of life is just showing up.’”
“The most precious gift you give to someone you love is time. Where you choose to spend it when you are free is the surest indicator of what and whom you love.
Time is a precious commodity because no one can give you anymore of it; no one can give you a 25th hour in any day or replenish the past time you have spent.
Except God. For He lives in eternity, and He can multiply our little loaves and fishes of time. But only the ones we give away to Him.”
~Peter Kreeft
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