An Appointed Place

April 2, 2021 | By Jeremy Begbie

Many of us are haunted by the memory of a missed opportunity. Near the end of Graham Greene’s novel, The Power and the Glory, an old priest sits in his cell the night before his execution. He looks back over his life, thinking of all the things he could have done and should have done, could have said and should have said. As Greene has it, “He felt like someone who had missed happiness by seconds at an appointed place.”