"The books or music in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust to them: it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing. These things—the beauty, the memory of our own past—are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of the worshipers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news form a country we have never yet visited."

—C.S. Lewis

"Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God’s handwriting—a wayside sacrament.—Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing."

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The past is our definition. we may strive, with good reason, to escape it, or to escape what is bad in it, but we will escape it only by adding something better to it.” --Wendell Berry

"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song." 

~ Maya Angelou

So, maybe God does have a wise purpose in letting us grow old and weak:

"I think God has planned the strength and beauty of youth to be physical. But the strength and beauty of age is spiritual. We gradually lose the strength and beauty that is temporary so we'll be sure to concentrate on the strength and beauty which is forever. And so we'll be eager to leave the temporary, deteriorating part of us and be truly homesick for our eternal home. If we stayed young and strong and beautiful, we might never want to leave."

~ J. Robertson McQuilkin

former president of Columbia Bible College in SC

(seen in Our Daily Bread, June 10, 2009)

seen at Rock City, near Chattanooga, TN

Evil is charming and beautiful. It makes you doubt yourself. It asks for one small compromise after another while it whittles you down. And it functions best when no one believes in it.

~ Joan of Arcadia

Then the time came when the risk it took
To remain tight in a bud was more painful
Than the risk it took to blossom.

~ Anais Nin