We humans have been given freedom so that we might freely adhere to God— the Mysterious Other we long for, the One who is our origin, sustenance, and destiny. Through freedom, we can love God as persons; we can enter into relationship with God.
Human freedom is profound, but sometimes it seems so complicated, and even overwhelming. The little human being—the bodily person in the world of time and space, who spends a third of his or her life asleep and much of the rest of it eating, drinking, and "going to the bathroom"—the little human being gets beaten down, gets sick, gets old, or just gets exhausted.
Our human fragility points to the fact that our freedom finds its crucial realization in prayer. When we discover our littleness, it is easier to pray. The Lord always responds to our cries for help, though often we do not understand His ways, and we don’t “see” the ways that His goodness is at work in us. We search for His light in the darkness of our difficulties; we beg to “understand,” we beg for an “answer”….