Grace and Divine Assistance

Offer him your heart soft and workable, and keep the form in which the Craftsman shaped you, keeping moisture in yourself so that you do not harden and lose the marks of his fingers.

Keeping the jointing, you will rise to the perfect. Soft clay is hidden in you by God’s craft. He will overlay you inside and out with pure gold and silver, and adorn you until the King himself desires your beauty.

But if you harden at once and spit out his art and prove thankless that you were made human, you lose both his art and life. To make belongs to God’s kindness; to be made belongs to human nature. Hand him what is yours — faith in him and subjection — and you will receive his art and be a perfect work of God.

I know many who continually attack us and say that what does not hinder is a cause. They say the one who did not guard, or did not prevent, is cause of a theft — as the one who did not put out a fire at the start is cause of the blaze, and the pilot who did not furl the sail is cause of shipwreck. The law even punishes such “causes.”

We answer that a cause is understood in doing and acting and effecting, while what does not hinder is, as such, inactive. The cause stands with the activity — as the shipbuilder with the ship’s coming to be.

Toward the saying “it is not of the one who wills or runs, but of God who shows mercy,” Solomon’s ascent-psalm helps: “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain; unless the Lord guards the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.”

This does not stop us from building or watching. It shows that what is built without God, and what lacks his guard, is built in vain and kept without result. If we say this building is God’s work, not the builder’s, we are not wrong — something has happened on the human side, yet the successful deed is thankfully referred to God who brings it to completion. Human willing is not enough for the end, nor is the athletes’ running enough to take the prize.