Bernadette Roberts: grace

The way it goes is that God takes something from us and then waits for our reaction.  Usually He takes something we never even knew we had to give and this is because God works at the unconscious level, while we can only work at the conscious level or with what we know about ourselves.  So God's work is really undercover, for which reason we need absolute faith and trust in what we do not know or cannot see - ourselves or God.   

This is what the doctrine of Grace is all about; it affirms God's continuous work in us, a work we cannot see with the conscious mind and rarely experience.  This is why what can be done on the conscious level is nothing compared to God's work (Grace) on a wholly unconscious level. 

Altogether this means that what we give is not of great consequence; it is what God takes or consumes that is important.  So we have to be content with where we are NOW.  When we realize that God wants to take something from us (first on the unconscious level), then we cooperate by surrendering it, by letting it go. 

A Passage Through Self