Carrying the Message

We were chatting the other evening by the fireside when Nancy said, "Listen! The clock's stopped." Involuntarily I listened and suddenly it struck me--not the clock, the thought--that one cannot hear a clock not ticking. Curious thing is that she didn't hear the clock ticking until it had stopped. Continuing this line of thought reveals the fact that we do not notice things until they've gone. We do not value things or persons until they are lost forever. We have our sight, our hearing, our sense of smell and it's not until these start to fail that we realize their value.