"Do Not Let Me Trust What I Can Grasp Between My Fingers"

My Lord, I have no hope but in Your Cross. You, by Your humility, and sufferings and death, have delivered me from all vain hope. You have killed the vanity of the present life in Yourself, and have given me all that is eternal in rising from the dead.

Why should I want to be rich, when You were poor? Why should I desire to be famous and powerful in the eyes of men, when the sons of those who exalted the false prophets and stoned the true rejected You and nailed You to the Cross? Why should I cherish in my heart a hope that devours me-the hope for perfect happiness in this life-when such hope, doomed to frustration, is nothing but despair?

My hope is what the eye has never seen. Therefore, let me not trust in visible rewards. My hope is what the heart of man cannot feel. Therefore let me trust not in the feelings of my heart. My hope is what the hand of man has never touched. Do not let me trust what I can grasp between my fingers. Death will loosen my grasp and my vain hope will be gone.

Let my trust be in Your mercy, not in myself. Let my hope be in your love, not in health, or strength, or ability or human resources.

If I trust You, everything else will become, for me, strength, health, and support. Everything will bring me to heaven. If I do not trust You, everything will be my destruction. ~ Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude, Part I, Ch. VII

 

Great Reflection from Thomas Merton

 

It is God’s love that warms me in the sun and

God’s love

That sends the cold rain. It is God’s love that

feeds me in the bread I eat,

and God that feeds me also by hunger and

fasting.

It is the love of God that sends the winter days

when I am cold and sick

and the hot summer when I labor and my

clothes are full of sweat:

but it is God Who breathes on me with light

winds off the river

and in the breezes out of the wood.

His love spreads the shade of the sycamore

over my head . . .

It is God’s love that speaks to me in the birds

and streams;

But also behind the clamor of the city God

speaks to me in His judgments,

and all these things are seeds sent to me from His will.

If these seeds would take root in my liberty,

and His will would grow from my freedom,

I would become the love that He is, and my

Harvest would be

His glory and my own joy. ~ Thomas Merton, (New Seeds of Contemplation, pp. 16-17)