We are faced with a choice. We can accept his love or reject it.

So often we live as if we had no need of God. We forget that every breath we take, let alone everything else we need, is a gift from him.

All he asks is that we pray to desire to trust in him, to pray to desire to do his will, and to ask for his help and mercy at all times.

But how hard trust comes to our proud human nature! How much easier it is to tackle our problems by ourselves and to come up with our own solutions!

So we go from mess to mess, not solving anything. We play God, but thanks be to God if we fail. For in our misery we will perhaps turn to him. And if we do, we will experience his mercy.

Our basic choice is this: to live dependent on God or to live independently; to acknowledge our essential poverty or to consider ourselves self-sufficient; to recognize our need for him or deny it; to live in truth or in a lie.

How difficult, how frightening, how humbling, this basic truth of revelation—that without God we can do nothing! But the good news is that, with him, we have everything.

Will we try to be like gods? Or will we abandon ourselves to him who is love? Will we seek his mercy and accept it? Will we trust in him?

Let us pray to the Holy Spirit, asking him to reveal the Father to us, to reveal his love, his power, and his concern, so that we may learn to live daily, in all our activities, within the power, the freeing power, of God.

—Adapted from The Power of Love, pp, 53–55, available from MH Publications.