What is the greatest surprise ...

What is the greatest surprise you have found about life?\
What is the greatest surprise you have found about life?" a university student asked me several years ago. "The brevity of it," I replied without hesitation. Time moves so quickly, and no matter who we are or what we have done, the time will come when our lives will be over. As Jesus said, "As long as it is day, we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work" (John 9:4).

Quotes from the same author

Prayer is the rope that pulls God and man together. But, it doesn't pull God down to us: It pulls us up to Him.
Only God Himself fully appreciates the influence of a Christian mother in the molding of character in her children.
I have the problems of, I must confess, old age.
The influence of a mother upon the lives of her children cannot be measured. They know and absorb her example and attitudes when it comes to questions of honesty, temperance, kindness and industry.
The thing that I remember the most in my childhood was the love of family and the discipline in the family. My father and mother both were disciplinarians, and they didn't mind using the rod. Maybe because I was the oldest child I always felt I got much more of it than anybody else.