This morning I found myself in Spenser's sonnets and specifically:

“After long stormes and tempests sad assay,
Which hardly I endured heretofore:
in dread of death and daungerous dismay,
with which my silly barke was tossed sore:
I doe at length descry the happy shore,
in which I hope ere long for to arryue:
fayre soyle it seemes from far and fraught with store of all that deare and daynty is alyue.
Most happy he that can at last atchyue
the ioyous safety of so sweet a rest:
whose least delight sufficeth to depriue
remembrance of all paines which him opprest.
All paines are nothing in respect of this,
all sorrowes short that gaine eternall blisse."

Edmund Spenser
Sonnet 63

Oh, what humility and gratitude to experience the immediate and ever sustained and sustaining Inward power of that "joyous safety" and "sweet rest" even in the "stormes and tempests sad assay." To stand on the faire soil of that happy shore even in the moment threatening pains. My "silly bark" no longer tossed about even as the waves churn around me and the flotsom and jetsam bubble up.

In Christ the happy shore is ever Present and is no longer a place hoped for or remembered and wished for; no longer looking into the future or the past. Oh, praise God for eternal Presence!