Sadly – I think that we often take actions and speak words that try to make us infinite – like God – rather than being the finite people that God created us to be.  Often our actions and words are well intentioned but misguided.

The only way to ltruly ive is in complete surrender of all that we are to the will of God.  Only in complete surrender are we able to experience freedom.

Gerald May* speaks of this when he writes:  “We all come ‘from freedom’ originally, and we are meant for freedom.  But addiction holds us back from our rightful destiny; it makes us prisoners of our own impulses and slaves to our own selfish idols.” (91)

Later he writes:  “Full love for God means we must turn to God over and against other things.  If our choice of God is to be made with integrity, we must first have felt other attractions and chosen, painfully, not to make them our gods.  True love, then, is not only born of freedom; it is also born of difficult choice.  A mature and meaningful love must say something like, ‘I have experienced other goodnesses, and they are beautiful, but it is You, my true heart’s desire, whom I choose above all.’  We have to turn away before we can come home with dignity.” (94)

One way we begin to do that is by embracing both our finitude and the loving and miraculous infinity of God.

*May, Gerald G., M.D.  Addiction and Grace.  San Francisco:  Harper and Row, Publishers, 1988.