My greatest spiritual work. . .

In the constant and seemingly endless debate over the role of our works and their contribution to our salvation, one quote seems to stand out to me.  It was probably an off the cuff kind of remark that ended up being remembered.  It was by an Orthodox author, although I do not recall who he was or is, but it is one of those things that drives a conversation.  It does not deny our works but frames them within the only context that they can fill.  So read it and give it some consideration.  I cannot remember the exact wording of the full quote although I am pretty sure that set within it was this pithy observation;

My spiritual works accomplish nothing except to bring me to that place where I realize I can do nothing to please God and am naked before Him.

The age of self-improvement in which we live seems to insist that if we want to, we can fix ourselves.  If we don't, we can accept ourselves as we are and live with it.  Both are lies.  How many podcasts and memes presume to tell us how to make a moral improvement on ourselves or at least to make a positive change in our appearance?  Whether we are intent upon fixing global warming and repairing the climate crisis or casting off the combustion engine and fossil fuels or making robots and smart machines replace the laborer on the production line, we are filled with the illusion that we can do this if we just try.  It is no wonder that this has translated into the realm of personal identity.  If we want to be a woman but find ourselves in a man's body, we can be the woman we want to be and no one can stop us.  If we want to discard a child in the womb we do not want, we can do so with a pill.  If we want to have a child but have trouble conceiving, reproductive technology can make it happen for us.  If we want to live in isolation and work, shop, eat, and entertain ourselves within the boundaries of our homes, we can.  If we want to believe in a truth that is only as deep and wide as our perception or has a time span limited to the moment, we can and no one can do anything about it.  So why don't we presume that we can invent the God of our choice or define ourselves in such a way that conflicts with nature and the work of the Creator? 

Of course, that is the problem.  All of our works bring unintended harm even when they do some good and all our efforts in the moment cannot prevent the direction of time toward its own destruction.  But our greatest spiritual work is to look into the mirror of our soul and find ourselves wanting, without the power to please God or repair our sinfulness or atone for our sins or hide them from His gaze.  Yet this is enough.  It might end in despair, regret without hope, but the Spirit swoops in to turn this into repentance and faith which trusts in God to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves.  God delights in our acknowledgement of our weakness not because He gloats over our plight but because He knows that this is where the Gospel begins in us.  It fills the emptiness of our own failing and inability with the fullness of Christ and His work.  It leads us beyond ourselves and our despair, disappointment, and destruction to bring us from darkness into His saving light.  Although we fear that the light will only expose, it does something we never expected.  It heals and redeems, shining upon Christ even as it exposes our failing and impotence.  And in that moment, the grand gift of grace does its work and the fruits of mercy formed on a cross make alive what was dead, giving hope to those who can hope for nothing, and raising us from the death of sin to the life death cannot touch.  If this is all our works can do, they have not done nothing but the something that in emptiness allows God to fill us.  Thanks be to God!