Victor Hugo, just before he died, wrote: ‘Within my soul I feel the evidence of my future life. I am like a forest that has been cut down more than once, yet the new growth has more life than ever. I am always rising toward the sky, with the sun shining down on my head. The earth provides abundant sap for me, but heaven lights my way to worlds unknown…Winter may be filling my head, but an eternal spring rises from my heart. At this late hour of my life, I smell the fragrance of lilacs, violets, and roses, just as I did when I was twenty. And the closer I come to the end of my journey, the more clearly I hear the immortal symphonies of eternal worlds inviting me to come…’
For people of faith, life’s sunset is not the beginning of the end, just the end of the beginning.