Bending low to the ground in love, You have breathed into the dust and raised us up as living flesh, imprinted with Your Divine Image and the potential to become persons in Your likeness. It is a potential, not a guarantee… Achieving the likeness of God is a gift given in response to a long and arduous struggle in faith to obey in body, mind, and soul, the noetic illumination that Christ invisibly communicates to our hearts. Lest we despair of the difficulties faced along this way, St. John Climacus offers a consoling word. “Not everyone can achieve dispassion. But all can be saved and can be reconciled to God.”

Stephen Muse : Treasure in Earthen Vessels