Saturday, August 7, 2010

Sometimes I'm really tired of

sinning. Ok, all the time. A lot of the time I find myself finding a way out of thinking what I'm doing is sinning(pride). Saying things like, 'is that really all that bad.' To a perfect God, most likely, yes. Even our good works are filthy rags. I am being continually blessed by 'Mere Christianity,' and wanted to share a paragraph that put things in perspective for what's on my mind so much of the time.

We may, indeed, be sure that perfect chastity-like perfect charity-will not be attained by any merely human efforts. You must ask for God's help. Even when you have done so, it may seem to you for a long time that no help, or less help than you need, is being given. Never mind. After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards in not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again. For however important chastity, courage, truthfulness or any other virtue may be, this process trains us in habits of the soul which are more important still. It cures our illusions about ourselves and teaches us to depend on God. We learn on the one hand, that we cannot trust ourselves even in our best moments, and, on the other, that we need not despair even in our worst, for our failures are forgiven. The only fatal thing is to sit down content with anything less than perfection.

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