Let us bring this a little nearer to home by seeing how particularly true it is of ourselves. Everything that you and I are has its origin in God alone. There is only one thing that is not his workmanship and that is sin. Apart from that, all our powers of body, of mind, and of soul have been formed and bestowed on us by God.

That is especially true of the spiritual life. God is the one and the only source of all goodness and all holiness. In ourselves there is neither the power to frame a single good intention nor the ability to fulfil one. The most we can do is to accept and use the grace which he gives us – a truth which we recognise in the familiar Collect:

“O Lord, from whom all good things come:
grant to us your humble servants,
that by your holy inspiration
we may think those things that are good,
and by your merciful guiding may perform the same…” (1) (our emphasis).

But much of what God gives us in this way we use casually and, so far from recognising from whom it comes, we like to imagine that we have our own private supply of goodness and decency, whereas the plain truth is that apart from God, we are really nothing at all. That is the basic fact of our very being and existence.