БЕДСТВИЯ (БЕДЫ)

We are all children of God, born according to His all-good will from the womb of the mother, to whom He gives the ability to conceive, form, grow and give birth to our body and He Himself bestows a rational soul. We are all His children, because we live in His house not made by hands, are illuminated by His sun, moon and stars, use His elements for our good - air, water, fire and earth; We all, in everything that is in us, that we have and that surrounds us, belong to Him completely, completely: we do not have a hair of our own - everything is His. And we reject such a great, incomparable, invaluable Benefactor every day, every hour, our whole lives. O damned sin, O intolerable mediastinum, separating children from the Father! When will you be completely destroyed and the children will rightfully belong completely to their Father, uniting with Him in mind, will and heart? Our disasters: war, famine, pestilence, disease, death itself - are the work of God’s special care for us sinners, this is the rod of the Good Shepherd, with which He mercifully punishes us and turns us to the straight path (2). The mystery of the disasters sent to us by God: with them God cleanses our soul and draws us to Himself. During tribulations, we learn by experience that the yoke of the Lord is easy and His burden is light (Matthew 11:30) (2). When good deeds do not admonish us to turn to God with all our hearts, when they even cause us to move away from God, then God admonishes us with the opposite means - with a fatherly rod, visiting us with disaster, so that when we did not know how to gratefully rest in the bosom of fatherly love, we would remember the happiness of being in His love in moments of grave adversity. Often the voice of weeping and prayer is heard from our lips after we have forgotten ourselves in our happiness, committed lawlessness in our ways and forgotten the Lord our Holy God. Human! This is what your life should consist of: constantly remembering God. Whom should you remember more? (2) In their malice towards us, in their treachery against us and in the insults inflicted on us in various ways, people are worthy of special pity and our love as the sick and perishing, who have become the instrument of our all-evil enemy, the devil, who teaches us all kinds of evil, who seeks through those like us to cause us some grief and misfortune. But these sorrows and troubles are very, very useful for us, revealing to us our heart ulcers, which we did not see or feel (6). Know, man, your spiritual trouble and firmly, constantly pray to the Savior of men to save you from it. Do not say to yourself: I am not in danger, I am not in trouble, I do not need to pray often and much for deliverance from a disaster that I do not comprehend and do not know. This is the trouble that you, being in the greatest trouble, do not know your trouble; this trouble is your sins (7). All humanity is constantly and strongly attracted to sin in all forms and experiences its consequences - confusion, contrition, sorrow and distress and all sorts of disasters with final death. There is only one Deliverer from this destructive sin - the Lord Jesus Christ. But how little faith people have in Him! (10) Man first departed from the solid foundation of the will of God and the commandments of God, as if from solid rails, speaking figuratively and in modern language, and deviated onto the disastrous path of self-will and the will of the devil - the enemy and apostate from God, and therefore his disasters have no end and measure (10). The human race has been subjected to countless disasters. Only then will he begin to prosper when he comes to his senses, repents, corrects himself and completely submits to the laws of the Creator and lives according to them exactly (10). You might be interested in: