God is Good: So it’s OK

The Garments of God
Jessica Powers

God sits on a chair of darkness in my soul.
He is God alone, supreme in His majesty.
I sit at his feet, a child in the dark beside Him;
my joy is aware of His glance and my sorrow is tempted
to nest on the thought that His face is turned from me.
He is clothed in the robes of His mercy, voluminous garments
not velvet or silk and affable to the touch,
but fabric strong for a frantic hand to clutch,
and I hold to it fast with the fingers of my will.
Here is my cry of faith, my deep avowal
to the Divinity that I am dust.
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Here is the loud profession of my trust.
I will not go abroad
to the hills of speech or the hinterlands of music
for a crier to walk in my soul where all is still.
I have this potent prayer through good or ill:
here in the dark I clutch the garments of God
https://alifegivinglent.wordpress.com/the-garments-of-god/

No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the Prophets: ‘And they shall all be taught of God.’ 

My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.– Jesus of Nazareth

By grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.– St. Paul

What makes the path of suffering (with its attendant despair) an impassable path—thus removing the corresponding work of sanctification (our share in holiness)—is that we approach it as being our responsibility. It is almost impossible to disabuse the human creature of the notion that it needs to somehow save its-self!

Carry this burden (of salvation/sanctification) and you have a guaranteed recipe for burnout—discouragement, disillusionment, destructive despair—and, unless you quit altogether, compromise, hypocrisy.

At most, the greatest contribution we can make is to cling to the coattails of God. And, even this is susceptible to distortion, an occasion for anxiety, self-focusing, fear; healthy only as we remember, we can do this because “it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.”

Realizing it, entrusting ourselves to it, by Faith receiving it, this is the linchpin, the Rosseta stone.

Lent, an opportunity to come to the end of our-selves, is a gift that carries us!