“God and a Grateful Old Man,” from My God and I: A Spiritual Memoir

p. 24

“I have two main feelings toward God these days: gratitude and hope. Both feelings keep slipping in and out of my spirit, one on the heels of the other. When gratitude comes, hope is right behind. If I am feeling grateful to God for the gifts he has given me, I at once start hoping that he will give the poor of our world more gifts to be grateful for. I feel ashamed to feel so good with what I have while most people on our planet feel so bad about the little they have. And my shame makes me very impatient with God. Which is all right, because impatience is one of hope’s life signs.”