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From the book “Uninvented Stories. Testimonies of eyewitnesses about the Providence of God” Happy woman One day after mass, one of the parishioners came up to me, and we talked for a long time. Then she told me: “You know, Father Konstantin, I am a very happy woman.” - Yes you! - I became interested. “It’s extremely rare to hear such recognition.” What is your happiness? - In children. - Well, that’s understandable: we raised good children and are happy with that. - No, father, I have a special happiness. The children are not mine. - And whose? - Well, since I started, I’ll have to tell you everything. It’s summer, everyone is walking, and I sit and cram and only through the wall I hear conversations about what news is happening in our city. That’s how I heard that Nikolai, my older brother’s friend, had a wife who suddenly died and left behind five children. I felt sorry for him to myself and crammed further - the entrance exams were just around the corner. I’m sitting here with books, my father is on the terrace, and I hear that Nikolai came to him there, and our family loved him very much and knew him since childhood. His father greeted him kindly, sat him down and consoled him: “It’s okay, Kolyusha, don’t worry!” You will find another wife and be happy! - Eh! Ivan Mikhailovich, Ivan Mikhailovich, I may find a wife, but I don’t need a wife, but a mother to my children. Where can I get a mother for them? After all, there are five of them, and a few less. The older one already understands something, but the younger ones don’t understand anything and shout: “Mom! Where is our mother? The whole soul was torn! They have lost weight out of melancholy, their arms have become thin, they don’t want to eat and only call for their mother. Nikolai is tall, but here he cries like a little boy. The father was confused and kept repeating: “There will be one, Kolyusha, and there will be one like that, believe me.” And I sit, listen and cannot understand what is happening to me - as if something big is growing and joyful... And as I grab the trigonometry on the floor, I ran out onto the terrace and said loudly: - Father was right when he said that there will be, here and it was found, take me, Kolya! - Father screams: - She's gone crazy! Where are you going with five, you stupid girl! - Then he attacked Nikolai: - Go away! Why are you confusing the girl, she needs to get ready for college! “But Nikolai doesn’t leave and just silently holds out his hands to me.” I grabbed them and him from the terrace and ran out, straight to his house. “While I was walking with him, some doubts began to arise in my soul about whether I was doing the right thing.” But as soon as we entered his house, as I saw all five of them - pitiful, crying, their heads tousled, and next to them - an indifferent, sleepy nanny - immediately all doubts went away. “At home I had shouting, crying, persuasion, but I stood my ground firmly and instead of going to college, I went with Nikolai to the registry office, and then down the aisle. — The first days of my new life were very difficult. But I fell in love with the kids, and they fell in love with me. And although Nikolai and I didn’t have much love, because I gave it all to the children, we were very happy. “That’s how my life went.” The children have grown up, my husband has died, now everyone has gotten married and got married, but I have one thing to do: I go from one to another to visit. I live with my daughter, but my son no longer gives me peace: “Dear mom, when will you arrive?” The one I live with doesn’t let me go, and the others also write: “Why has she forgotten us? We wait!" “Now the youngest from the army has returned and says: “I won’t let you go anywhere, stay at home with me, I’m the smallest.” From the book “Uninvented Stories. Testimonies of eyewitnesses about the Providence of God"

True stories. Eyewitness testimonies about God's Providence

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A cure for sin. Parables (A. V. Fomin, 2010)

About the Providence of God in human life

Once upon a time there lived a peasant who worked from morning to night, but at the same time barely made ends meet. This went on for many years, and all these years the thought of the injustice of the world order came to him more and more often. “Why has God blessed some with wealth and nobility, while leaving others in poverty for the rest of their lives?”

And then one day he had a vision. It stands in a huge cave filled with a great variety of crosses of different sizes, types, and weights. There are crosses here, gold, stone, wood, and straw. Then an Angel appeared to him and said: “Do you see these crosses? Choose any one for yourself and take it to the top of the mountain.”

The peasant first chose the largest golden cross, but no matter how hard he tried, he could not even lift it. Then I decided to take a smaller cross, made of silver, but I couldn’t take it on myself either. He went through all the crosses - some were too heavy, others were unbearable. A simple wooden cross suited him, which he conveniently took and carried up the mountain. Having carried the cross upstairs, the peasant returned and asked the Angel:

– What reward will I have for this work?

“So that you can decide for yourself what you deserve, I will reveal to you what kind of crosses they were,” said the Angel. – The golden cross that you first liked is the royal cross. Most people think: how good it is to be a king! Sit on your soft throne and give out orders. But they don’t know that just as gold is the heaviest metal, so the royal share is the heaviest. The silver cross is reserved for those in authority. These people bear a lot of worries and sorrows of other people, and few manage to carry this cross to the top. Copper is the cross of those to whom God has sent wealth. Many envy them, but life is harder for them than for you. After your work, you can sleep peacefully, no one will encroach on your modest home.

But the rich man fears for his property both day and night, lest anyone deceive him. In addition, the rich man must give an answer to God for his wealth: how he used it. The Iron Cross is a military cross. Ask those who fought, and they will tell you how they get it. Stone cross - among trading people; their work is not physically difficult, but how often does it happen that a merchant loses everything and is forced to start over! But the wooden cross that you lifted up the mountain is your peasant cross. The Lord, who knows the heart, knows that in any other situation you would have destroyed your soul if you had not carried the cross. So go home and don’t complain about your lot: the Lord gives everyone a cross according to their strength.

* * *

One ascetic, seeing the untruth existing in the world, prayed to God and asked him to reveal to him the reason why righteous and pious people fall into trouble and are unfairly tormented, while the unrighteous and sinful become rich and live in peace. When the ascetic prayed for the revelation of this secret, he heard a voice that said:

– Do not experience what your mind and the power of your knowledge cannot achieve. And do not seek secret things, because the judgments of God are an abyss. But since you asked to know, go down into the world, and sit in one place, and listen to what you see, and from this experience you will understand a small part of God’s judgments. Then you will know that God’s care in everything is unsearchable and incomprehensible.

Hearing this, the elder descended with caution into the world and came to a certain meadow through which the road passed.

Not far away there was a spring and an old tree, in the hollow of which the old man hid well. Soon a rich man rode up on a horse. I stopped at a spring to drink water and rest. When he got drunk, he took out a wallet with a hundred ducats (gold coins) from his pocket and counted them. Having finished the bill, I wanted to put it back in its place, but did not notice how the wallet fell into the grass.

He ate, rested, slept, and then mounted his horse and rode away, not knowing anything about the ducats. Soon another passer-by came to the source, found a wallet with ducats, took it and ran across the fields.

A little time passed, and another passer-by appeared. Being tired, he stopped at the source, took some water, took some bread out of his scarf, and sat down to eat. While the poor man was eating, a rich horseman appeared, enraged and with a face changed from anger, and attacked him. He shouted with rage to give him his ducats.

The poor man, having no idea about ducats, swore that he had not seen such a thing. But he was very angry and began to whip and beat him until he killed him. He searched all the poor man's clothes, found nothing and left upset.

The old man saw everything from the hollow and was surprised. He regretted and cried about the unjust murder and prayed to the Lord, saying:

- Lord, what does this Your will mean? Tell me, I ask You, how Your goodness tolerates such untruth. One lost ducats, another found them, and another was killed unjustly.

While the elder was praying with tears, an Angel of the Lord descended and said to him:

“Don’t be sad, elder, and don’t think out of annoyance that this supposedly happened without the will of God.” But of what happens, some happen by permission, some for punishment (education), and others for the economy. So listen:

The one who lost the ducats is the neighbor of the one who found them. The latter had a garden worth one hundred ducats. The rich man, because he was money-grubbing, forced him to give him the garden for fifty ducats. The poor man, not knowing what to do, asked God for revenge.

Therefore, God arranged for him to be rewarded twice as much.

Another poor man, tired, who found nothing and was killed unjustly, one day committed murder himself. However, he sincerely repented and spent the rest of his life in a Christian and godly manner. He constantly asked God to forgive him for the murder and said: “My God, give me the same death that I did!” Of course, our Lord forgave him from the moment he showed repentance. Moreover, he not only cared about keeping His commandments out of curiosity, but even wanted to pay for his old guilt. So, having heard him, He allowed him to die in a violent way - as he asked Him - took him to Himself, even giving him a shining crown for his curiosity!

Finally, another, a money-grubber, who lost ducats and committed murder, was punished for his covetousness and love of money. God allowed him to fall into the sin of murder so that his soul would become ill and come to repentance. For this reason, he now leaves the world and goes to become a monk!

So, where, in what case, do you see that God was unrighteous, or cruel, or merciless? Therefore, in the future, do not test the fate of God, for He creates them righteously and as He knows, while you consider them to be untruth. Know also that many other things happen in the world by the will of God for a reason that people do not know. So, it is correct to say: “You are righteous, O Lord, and your judgments are just” (Ps. 119, 137).

* * *

One African king had a close friend who, in any situation, had the habit of saying: “That’s good!” One day the king was hunting. The friend, as usual, loaded the guns for the king, but apparently did something wrong: when the king took the gun from his friend and pulled the trigger, the king's thumb was torn off. The friend, as usual, said: “This is good!” To this the king replied: “No, this is not good!” - and ordered his friend to be sent to prison.

A year later, the king was hunting in the jungle again. Suddenly an armed, wild tribe of cannibals attacked him, capturing him along with his entire retinue. Having brought the captives to the village, the cannibals hauled a pile of firewood, tied the king’s hands, preparing him for sacrificial slaughter. They soon noticed that the king was missing a thumb on his hand. Because of their superstition, they never ate those who had defects in their bodies. Having untied the king, they released him.

Returning home, he remembered the incident when he lost his finger, and felt remorse for his treatment of his friend. He immediately went to the prison to talk to him. “You were right,” he said, “it was good that I was left without a finger.” He told everything that happened to him, and concluded his story with the words: “I really regret that I put you in prison, it was bad of me.” “No,” said his friend, “that’s good!” "What are you saying? Is it good that I sent my friend to prison for a whole year?” “If I weren’t in prison, I would be there with you.”

* * *

Once upon a time there was a peasant who thought that if he could make the weather, things would be much better. “The grain will ripen faster,” he thought, “and there will be more grains in the ears.”

God saw his thoughts and said to him:

- Since you think you know better when what weather is needed, control it yourself this summer.

The peasant was very happy. He immediately wished for sunny weather. When the ground dried up, he wished that it would rain at night. The grain grew like never before. Everyone could not get enough of it, but the peasant thought: “Great, everything is good this year - both the weather and the harvest. I have never seen such ears of corn in my life.”

End of introductory fragment.

A parable about GOD'S PROVISION.... One ascetic, seeing the untruth existing in the world, prayed to God and asked him to reveal to him the reason why righteous and pious people fall into trouble and are unfairly tormented, while the unrighteous and sinners get rich and live in peace. When the ascetic prayed for the revelation of this secret, he heard a voice that said: “Do not experience what your mind and the power of your knowledge cannot achieve.” And do not seek secret things, because the judgments of God are an abyss. But, since you asked to find out, go down into the world and sit in one place, and listen to what you see, and from this experience you will understand a small part of God’s judgments. Then you will know that God’s care in everything is unsearchable and incomprehensible. Hearing this, the elder descended with caution into the world and came to a certain meadow through which the road passed. Not far away there was a spring and an old tree, in the hollow of which the old man hid well. Soon a rich man rode up on a horse. I stopped at a spring to drink water and rest. When he got drunk, he took out a wallet with a hundred ducats from his pocket and counted them. Having finished the bill, he wanted to put it back in its place, but did not notice how the wallet fell into the grass. He ate, rested, slept, and then mounted his horse and rode away, not knowing anything about the ducats. Soon another passerby came to the source, found a wallet with ducats, took it and ran across the fields. A little time passed, and another passer-by appeared. Being tired, he stopped at the source, took some water, took some bread out of his scarf, and sat down to eat. While the poor man was eating, the rich horseman appeared, enraged, his face changed with anger, and attacked him. He shouted with rage to give him his ducats. The poor man, having no idea about ducats, swore that he had not seen such a thing. But he was very angry and began to whip and beat him until he killed him. He searched all the poor man's clothes, found nothing, and left upset. The old man saw everything from the hollow and was surprised. He regretted and cried about the unjust murder and prayed to the Lord, saying: “Lord, what does this Thy will mean?” Tell me, I ask you, how Your goodness tolerates such untruth. One lost ducats, another found them, and another was killed unjustly. While the elder was praying with tears, an Angel of the Lord descended and said to him: “Do not be sad, elder, and do not think out of annoyance that this supposedly happened without the will of God.” But of what happens, some happen by permission, some for punishment (education), and others for the economy. So, listen: The one who lost the ducats is the neighbor of the one who found them. The latter had a garden worth one hundred ducats. The rich man, because he was money-grubbing, forced him to give him the garden for fifty ducats. The poor man, not knowing what to do, asked God for revenge. Therefore, God arranged for him to be rewarded twice as much. Another poor man, tired, who found nothing and was killed unjustly, one day committed murder himself. However, he sincerely repented and spent the rest of his life in a Christian and godly manner. He constantly asked God to forgive him for the murder and said: “My God, give me the same death that I did!” Of course, our Lord forgave him from the moment he showed repentance. Moreover, he not only cared about keeping His commandments out of curiosity, but even wanted to pay for his old guilt. So, having heard him, He allowed him to die in a violent way - as he asked Him - took Him to Himself, even giving him a shining crown for his curiosity! Finally, another, a money-grubber, who lost ducats and committed murder, was punished for his covetousness and love of money. God allowed him to fall into the sin of murder so that his soul would become ill and come to repentance. For this reason, he is now leaving the world and going to become a monk! So, where, in what case, do you see that God was unrighteous, or cruel, or merciless? Therefore, in the future, do not test the fate of God, for He creates them righteously and as He knows, while you consider them to be untruth. Know also that many other things happen in the world according to the will of God, for a reason that people do not know. So, it is correct to say: “Thou art righteous, O Lord, and thy judgments are just” (Ps. 119:137).

Providence of God (+VIDEO)

What is God's Providence? How to properly relate to the events of your own life? What does the story of righteous Joseph teach? How does the life of an individual relate to the fate of humanity?

Friends, today we’ll talk about a very serious and important topic. True, I don’t know a single topic that would be beyond seriousness, but, nevertheless, this is the most important: about the Providence of God.

Industry is about thinking ahead. The prefix “pro” means moving forward, and the part “thinking” means thought; Providence is God's thinking ahead. God knows what will happen ahead, God foresees and arranges the future and does something in our life that we don’t like, that we don’t want, so unpleasant, strange, but, nevertheless, we need to come to terms with it, for the owners life is not us. Then, as time passes, we suddenly find out: this is what it was needed for, and it turns out how good it is. This is a cross for the human heart.

With God's help, let's say a few words about Providence, since we are under the weight of the burden of this concept and it concerns us all.

Here, for example, is the story of righteous Joseph. As you remember, Joseph had dreams. He spoke about these dreams with a trusting soul: that his father, mother, and brothers would bow to him - he would be at the head, like the sun, and others - like the moon and stars; he will be a sheaf in the center of the field, and all the other sheaves around him will bow down to him. With a trusting soul, he told what God had revealed to him in a dream in images, and tried to reconstruct in fortune-telling how it would be. And the brothers were jealous: “There goes the dreamer.” The brothers wanted to kill him out of envy, and in this way Joseph served as a prototype of Jesus Christ. It was only out of envy that the relatives, the close people, wanted to kill someone who had done nothing wrong. Thank God, Reuben saved him from death, but Joseph’s brothers threw him into a ditch, and then sold him into slavery, and he ended up in Egypt. Then there was a complex, terrible story with Potiphar and his wife, with fornication, with imprisonment. One way or another, Joseph became the main person for Pharaoh. He guessed the dreams of not only the pharaoh, but also his fellow prisoners. He predicted the future. God was with him. Then, when the brothers came to Egypt, they did not recognize him, for he was in glory, combed, made up, dressed in Egyptian clothes. Was in favor. And he revealed himself to them: “I am Joseph your brother.” This is a very important point that concerns the relationship between Christ and the Jews, because they killed Christ for nothing, out of envy, and Christ loves them to this day. But they do not recognize Him that He is the Messiah. Joseph in glory says to his poor brothers: “I am your brother,” and this will happen sooner or later to the Jewish people: Jesus Christ will loudly say to the Jewish people: “I am your brother. I am your Messiah." They will burst into tears and understand that they killed Him wrong. But this is not the topic of our conversation now.

R. Leinweber. Selling Joseph into slavery.

The brothers thought: now Joseph will execute them, because he had every right to do so: he is in glory, they are nothing. He is an innocent victim made glorious, preserved by God, and they are villains and murderers by intention. But he told them the following words: “You are not to blame, it was God who sent me here to Egypt through your hands, so that now, when there is hunger throughout the whole earth, I can feed you and our father and the whole earth, so that you can be preserved so that we can meet.” He attributes to God's Providence the atrocities of his brothers, his sale into slavery, his misadventures, his exaltation, famine throughout the entire earth, the brothers' coming to Egypt for bread and their miraculous meeting - all this, he believes, is a kind of fabric woven from threads, and each individually it is not clear why it is there. Well, here's a thread, here's another thread. And what? This is not a carpet yet. One snowflake is not snow, one rain is not rain. But the threads woven together are already a carpet, and also a pattern on the carpet, and if you look from afar, it’s some kind of woven panel. That's when the understanding of some things begins.

Joseph had the mind of God, which is why he said that God arranged it all this way. There was, of course, philanthropy in this: the brothers could have been executed - they deserved it. But he saw more. He thought: “God arranged it so that I did not die, I am alive, I am in glory, and now you have come to me. I need you, I love you, I have forgiven you, we are all alive and will be together.”

This is the Providence of God, when the Lord God uses all His wisdom to weave evil intentions, evil intentions of demons and people together, to extinguish fire with fire and, in the end, to bring everything to some good and useful goal. We call this the Providence of God, knowledge in advance, foresight, good knowledge , bringing people, nations, tribes and the individual through history to some good goal. This is what God's Providence is. You need to learn to notice it.

The intricacy of different events should show a person: above him there was a Watcher and a Guardian

Now this is a psychological workshop. Let each of you remember your life from childhood, from the moment where the first glimpses of a child’s consciousness begin, and trace through the years of school, grade, squad, battalion, through the army, through first love, through the first kiss, through the first fight, through the first sin, through the first tears of your life until today. I think that most people whose conscience has not died will understand that all this complex fabric, seemingly a plexus of accidents, is in fact a kind of single carpet where the Lord was in charge. I wanted to go there, but I missed the plane. I wanted to go there, but they stopped accepting documents, so I entered here. I wanted to marry this girl, and she fell in love with my friend. I married not her, but a completely different woman five years later. I wanted to go to the North, to be recruited to work in oil wells, but they didn’t take me on the commission, my health let me down, and now I’m doing mathematics and, apparently, I’ll be doing it all my life. This intricacy of different events should show a person that there was a Watcher and Watcher above him.

Every person's life is an unwritten book. What about the book? Book of Divine Providence. Simply due to our inattention to life, we do not notice this constant attentive gaze of the One who loves us above us, looking into the back of our heads.

The same goes for history. Among the sciences close to theology, there are some that are closest to it. For example, philology. One of the fathers - not from the fathers of the Ancient, Holy and Radiant Church, but from modern teachers of the faith, and perhaps even from Western teachers, cardinals or theologians... well, one of the fathers said: “Philology gives birth to theology.” Correct words. Study Hebrew and you will fall in love with the Torah. Learn Greek and you will fall in love with the Gospel. Take Latin and you will fall in love with Cicero. Do something else and you will start reading great books. And if you start reading great books, you will become great yourself, because reading about the greatness of plans draws a person to great things. Philology gives birth to theology.

And besides philology, history is close to theology. History is a book of God's Providence about individual peoples and tribes. This is what we need to feel above ourselves. Where was I born? Where was I raised? Where did I live? Over there. Did you serve? Studied? Where do I live now? And if, as in geography, you draw a map, it will be such a strange curve through many cities and villages. There is no such thing as being born here, staying here, living here all your life. It carries you through life. And what is it? This is such a secret pattern, drawing. This is a picture of God's Providence for man.

Stage of work on an embroidered portrait. The Wrong Side (artist: Cayce Zavaglia)

But you yourself are only an element of the overall picture. You come up to the mosaic, look at it point-blank: here’s a pebble, here’s a pebble... - I don’t understand anything. You move a couple of meters away - this is a leg. I don’t know whose leg it is. You move 10 meters away - it’s a person’s leg, but I don’t see what kind of person it is. Walk away 100 meters - and you understand: the panel depicts the Battle of Gaugamela by Alexander the Great or the battle of the Spartans with Xerxes. You need to take a significant distance from the drawing to understand the beauty of its individual threads. This is Providence. Face to face you can't see the face.

And in old age, people, assessing their lives, understand that they were preserved, they were observed, they were covered, it was God’s work. As Arseny Tarkovsky wrote:

Life took me under its wing, took care of me and saved me, I was really lucky. But this is not enough. Everything that could come true fell right into my hands, like a five-fingered leaf, but this is not enough. The leaves were not burned, the branches were not broken off... Everything burned brightly. But this is not enough.

Human life is a piece of a large mosaic. Step away and you'll find out that you're embedded in a huge painting.

Human life is a thread in a tapestry. This is a mica piece of a large mosaic. Step away and you will find out that you are sewn, inserted, built into a huge picture. This is Providence. You don't understand yourself. Why here, why am I here? Why was I born in the 20th century and not in the 19th? Then I would have studied chemistry with Mendeleev and poetry with Blok. Why wasn’t he born in the 17th–18th centuries? He would have served in the musketeer regiment in France with d'Artagnan. Why wasn't Columbus born together? I would sail from Spain to Latin America to bring the Papuans to faith. Why am I here and not there? Because you are a small link in a huge picture. This is God's Providence. You are the right piece of glass in color, range, quality, texture, inserted into one big picture. This is usually understood towards the end of life. But it would be better to understand earlier.

Completed embroidered portrait (artist: Cayce Zavaglia)

Understand early that you are not forgotten, not abandoned, not plunged into chaos, that you are loved, interesting, and needed by God exactly where you are, exactly where you are now. This is the Providence of God.

Read the history of the Church, the history of the world, the history of different countries, because, according to the words of Elder Nektary of Optina, history is a science that explains God’s providence for entire nations. This is the book of God's Providence operating in the world. Let us be attentive to the breath of this Providence.

You want this, but it turns out this - don’t twitch. This is God's Providence. What happens in the world is not your will, but God’s.

You want your daughter to marry a millionaire, but she marries a mechanic. You want your son to be a theater and film actor, and he to become a civil airline pilot. You want it, but it turns out this way - don’t twitch. This is God's Providence. It is not your will that happens in the world, but God’s. “Thy will be done, Lord!” - must speak.

Let us try to understand the Providence of God in the history of nations, in the history of the Church, in our personal history, looking back, in the history of our children and our neighbors, listening to their stories and confessions. Let us try not to violate all the providential actions of the Lord God in the world, so as not to be His opponent. We are a small pebble in a huge mosaic, the beauty of which can only be understood by moving away to the required distance.