Dear God, I congratulate myself on how faithful in you I am, how dependent upon you I feel. In this way I twist what is good into a misshapen tangle, cloaking it in my defects. O Lord, I torment myself as I recognize how far I fall short. I imagine faith in you to be some virtue, and it is exactly at this point that it boomerangs and becomes a shortcoming. These defects, always the same, my constant bedevilments, persistent yet manifested in ever-new ways.
Let my dependence on you be pure: the desperation of the weak. Let me be weak, that I may lurch for your hand in gratitude, and not puff myself up with displays of piety.
God, set my hands to work. Grant me duty. Let effort drive out my pride and self-regard.
(Letter #1139)
Daily Letters to God 