To be sure, let us then use all means that reason can provide to avert the threat; but the scope we accord this preoccupation in our minds must be kept in proportion with the true import of that evil. We must never simply deliver ourselves over to the autonomous mechanism of the campaign we wage for averting it. Again and again, in the course of varying situations as our action of defense develops, we must confront the evil in view with God, and renew the act of surrendering ourselves to the holy will of God. Thus only can we avoid being completely dominated by our anxiety and preserve our inner freedom.

In the presence of great tasks, again, to which we feel called by God, we should not rely on a sense of natural security but draw strength and courage from our confidence in God. If we possess all natural equipment needed for these tasks, we should in humility remember the truth that it is to God we owe our natural endowments and that without His help we may fail in spite of all our natural talents.

Moreover, any blessing that may derive from our work either for ourselves or for others depends exclusively on the help of God. And again, if we do not feel equal by nature to the tasks proposed to us, we should by no means lose heart but pray, as we should in the contrary case, too: “O God, come to my assistance, O Lord, make haste to help me” (Ps. 69:2). To God’s arms we should repair, and say with the Psalmist, “Through my God I shall climb over a wall” (Ps. 17:30).

Even in inner darkness, we must trust God

The supreme test, however, of our confidence in God lies, perhaps, in those moments of complete inner darkness in which we feel as though we are forsaken by God. Our heart feels blunt; our prayers for strength and inspiration sound hollow; they seem plainly to be of no avail; wherever we look, our glance perceives but our impotence and, as it were, an impenetrable wall separating us from God. We doubt our being called; we appear to ourselves rejected and abandoned by God. It is in such moments, when we are most tempted to part with our confidence in God, that we need it most. An ardent belief in His love; a steadfast conviction that He is near to us even though we are, or imagine ourselves to be, far away from Him; an unbroken awareness that “He hath first loved us, and sent His Son to be a propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:10)—these must carry us across the chasms of darkness and lend us strength to blindly let ourselves fall into His arms.