We have to gamble on the invisible and risk all that we can see and taste and feel.

“... sooner or later, if we follow Christ? we have to risk everything in order to gain everything.

We have to gamble on the invisible and risk all that we can see and taste and feel.
But we know the risk is worth it, because there is nothing more insecure than the transient world. For this world as we see it is passing away (1 Corinthians 7:31).

Without courage we can never attain to true simplicity.
Cowardice keeps us “double minded” — hesitating between the world and God.

In this hesitation, there is no true faith — faith remains an opinion.

We are never certain, because we never quite give in to the authority of an invisible God.

This hesitation is the death of hope.

We never let go of those visible supports which, we well know, must one day surely fail us.
And this hesitation makes true prayer impossible — it never quite dares to ask for anything or,
if it asks,
it is so uncertain of being heard that in the very act of asking, it surreptitiously seeks by human prudence to construct a make-shirt answer (cf. James 1:5-8)

What is the use of praying if, at the very moment of prayer, we have so little confidence in God that we are busy planning our own kind of answer to our prayer?”

~ Thomas Merton, Thoughts In Solitude #MeatNotMilk