At age ninety-three, Rose Kennedy was being interviewed by a magazine reporter. By this time, four of her nine children had died violently. Another daughter, Rosemary, was mentally disabled all her life and would soon be gone.

Mrs. Kennedy had outlived her husband long enough to have seen his rather profligate and unscrupulous life told and retold in the press. She is an old lady, hit by tragedies again and again. The reporter asked about all this and Rose Kennedy answered, slowly: "I have always believed that God never gives a cross to bear larger than we can carry. And I have always believed that, no matter what, God wants us to be happy. He doesn't want us to be sad.

"Birds sing after a storm," she said, "Why shouldn't we?"

In the presence of death, it is not easy to express joy at least not for the world to see. But those in Christ have an inward joy just the same.