"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