My aged friends, permit me to counsel you not to give way to despondency, and unprofitable repining at the course of past events. Trust in the Lord, and encourage your hearts to hope in His mercy and faithfulness. Your afflictions may have been many and sore, and your present circumstances may be embarrassing, and your prospects for the future, gloomy. Providence may seem to have set you up as a mark for the arrows of adversity. Stroke upon stroke has been experienced. Billow after billow has gone over you, and almost overwhelmed you. Truly the time has come, when you can say, ‘My joys are gone.’ But though friends have been snatched from you, or have proved unfaithful - though children, once your hope and joy, are numbered with the dead, or what is far worse, profligate or ungrateful; though your property has wasted away, or your riches suddenly taken wings and flown like the eagle to heaven; though bodily diseases and pain distress you - still trust in the divine promise, ‘I will never leave thee, not forsake thee.’ Though friends die, God forever lives. Though your earthly comforts and supports are gone, you are heir to an inheritance ‘incorruptible, undefiled, and that never fadeth away.

~ Archibald Alexander