Hope in a decadent age

“All that is meant by Decadence is ‘falling off.’  It implies in those who live in such a time no loss of energy or talent or moral sense.  On the contrary, it is a very active time, full of deep concerns, but peculiarly restless, for it sees no clear lines of advance.  The loss it faces is that of Possibility.  The forms of art as of life seem exhausted, the stages of development have been run through.  Institutions function painfully.  Repetition and frustration are the intolerable result.  Boredom and fatigue are great historical forces.”
Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present (New York, 2000), page xvi.
The ultimate historical force: “Behold, I am making all things new” (Revelation 21:5).

Ray Ortlund

Darkness is small, and passing

“Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while.  The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him.  For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing; there was light and high beauty forever beyond its reach.”
J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (Boston, 1994), page 901.
“This darkness is very deep, but our God has gone deeper still.  When you have been to Calvary, even Ravensbrook [Concentration Camp] looks small.”
Corrie Ten Boom, quoted in Peter J. Kreeft, The Philosophy of Tolkien (San Francisco, 2005), page 186.
Ray Ortlund