O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!  how unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!
                                  -- Rom. xi. 33

It doth not yet appear what we shall be.
                                    -- I John iii.2

      No star is ever lost we once have seen,
    We always may be what we might have been.
    Since Good, though only thought, has life and breath,
    God's life - can always be redeemed from death;
    And evil, in its nature,  is decay,
    And any hour can blot it all away;
    The hopes that lost in some far distance seen,
    May be the truer life, and this the dream.
                                          A. A. Procter

ST. BERNARD has said: "Man, if thou desirest a noble and holy life, and unceasingly prayest to God for it, if thou continue constant in this thy desire, it will be granted unto thee without fail, even if only in the day or hour of thy death; and if God should not give it to thee then, thou shalt find it in Him in eternity: of this be assured."  Therefore do not relinquish your desire, though it be not fulfilled immediately, or though ye may swerve from your aspirations, or even forget them for a time....  The love and aspiration which once really existed live forever before God, and in Him ye shall find the fruit thereof; that is, to all eternity it shall be better for you than if you had never felt them.
                                          J. Tauler