Speak

Sunday, May 29, 2005

I got this excerpt from the prologue a novel I'm currently reading - The Letter, by Richard Paul Evans. (In case you find the author disturbingly familiar, he is also the author of The Christmas Box, a superb book, I say.) And I think its a very good read because as I flip through each page, I gain new insights into what's truly important.

So I share with you all this short but beautiful passage, and hope you all gain from it as I had. :)

"It is often during the worst of times that we see the best of humanity - awakening within the most ordinary of us that which is most sublime.

I do not believe that it is circumstance that produces such greatness any more than it is the canvas that makes the artist. Adversity merely presents the surface on which we render our souls' most exacting likeness. It is in the darkest skies that stars are best seen.

The great truth about life - and all relationships - is that even the greatest of loves may shudder beneath the shadow of eclipse. I am not a believer in love at first sight. For love, in its truest form, is not the thing of starry-eyed or star-crossed lovers, it is far more organic, requiring nurturing and time to fully bloom, and, as such, seen best not in its callow youth, but in its wrinkled maturity.

Like all living things, love, too, struggles against hardship, and in the process sheds it fatuous skin to expose one composed of more than just a storm of emotion - one of loyalty and divine friendship. Agape. And though it may be temporarily blinded by adversity, it never gives in or up, holding tight to lofty deals that transcend this earth and time - while its counterfeit simply concludes it was mistaken and quickly runs off to find the next real thing."

-Richard Paul Evans

writing at 10:10 PM