TO MARY WILLIS SHELBURNE: On the hard task of learning to depend only on God and on nothing and no one else.
6 December 1955
I feel it almost impossible to say anything (in my comfort and
security—apparent security, for real security is in Heaven and thus
earth affords only imitations) which would not sound horribly false and
facile. Also, you know it all better than I do. I should in your place
be (I have in similar places been) far more panic-stricken
and even perhaps rebellious. For it is a dreadful truth that the state
of (as you say) ‘having to depend solely on God’ is what we all dread
most. And of course that just shows how very much, how almost
exclusively, we have been depending on things. That trouble goes so far
back in our lives and is now so deeply ingrained, we will not
turn to Him as long as He leaves us anything else to turn to. I suppose
all one can say is that it was bound to come. In the hour of death and
the day of judgement, what else shall we have? Perhaps when those
moments come, they will feel happiest who have been forced (however
unwillingly) to begin practising it here on earth. It is good of Him to force us: but dear me, how hard to feel that it is good at the time....
Yours, Jack
good stuff
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