Meditate on it

I love quotations of every kind. Currently I'm reading a lot of American Literature because it happens to be what I'm teaching.  Here are some of the more interesting proverbs from sifting through Benjamin Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack. "Love your enemies, for they tell you your faults." "Many have quarreled about religion that have never practiced it." "Mary's mouth costs her nothing, for she never opens it but at other's expense." "Men and melons are hard to know." "Want of care does us more damage than want of knowledge."  Benjamin Franklin "Wealth is not his that has it but his who enjoys it." "Well done is better than well said." "What you would seem to be, be really." "When you are good to others, you are best to yourself." "Wink at small faults; remember thou has great ones." "Wish not so much to live long as to live well.&

Pro 14:13  Even in laughter the heart may ache, and the end of joy may be grief. Matthew Henry interprets this quote as "the vanity of carnal mirth"--that a person may laugh in his sin, but the end of his actions will bring grief.  My understanding of this proverb is more fluid--I think the proverb in the sense that life encompasses a spectrum of emotions, and that the extremes of this spectrum-great joy and great grief--bleed into each other. Heaviness intermingles with joy at times.   Joy can be threaded through with heaviness. One of the saddest moments of my life was a 50th birthday party for my brother-in-law who was terminally ill with kidney cancer.  Yes, it was a celebration of Mark's life, a happy birthday, a reunion of many friends and relatives from various places and various years.  In fact, if he were not sick, it might have been the happiest of parties: we were all authentically happy to be there, ready to embrace the evening.  And Mark was a man who lov