Wise Thoughts Before Lent…

What then? some one will say: ‘We have been beguiled and are lost. Is there then
no salvation left? We have fallen: Is it not possible to rise again? We have been
blinded: May we not recover our sight? We have become crippled: Can we never walk
upright? In a word, we are dead: May we not rise again?’ He that woke Lazarus who
was four days dead and already stank, shall He not, O man, much more easily raise
thee who art alive? He who shed His precious blood for us, shall Himself deliver
us from sin. Let us not despair of ourselves, brethren; let us not abandon
ourselves to a hopeless condition. For it is a fearful thing not to believe in a
hope of repentance.