all we can choose

"... the purest acts of faith always feel like risks.  Instead of leading to absolute quietude and serenity, true spiritual growth is characterized by increasingly deep risk taking.  Growth in faith means willingness to trust God more and more, not only in those areas of our lives where we are most successful, but also, and most significantly, at those levels where we are most vulnerable, wounded, and weak.  It is where our personal power seems most defeated that we are given the most profound opportunities to act in true faith.
 
The purest faith is enacted when all we can choose is to relax our hands or clench them, to turn wordlessly toward or away from God. 

This tiny option, the faith Jesus measured as the size of a mustard seed, is where grace and the human spirit embrace in absolute perfection and explode in world-changing power."
                         ~ Gerald G. May, M.D., in Addiction & Grace