Once upon a time there lived a kind woman. She had many friends, they always came to her house and had fun with her, and she always treated them to delicious dishes, which she knew how to cook very well. Soon her friends got married and had children, but she was still unmarried. But everything has its time and, although quite late, the woman still got married. Her happiness in her family life blossomed, but suddenly a serious illness crushed her husband and confined him to bed. So she never knew the happiness of motherhood and did not enjoy happiness with her beloved husband. Friends, who had not left their house before their illness, began to visit them very rarely, and in the corner they whispered to her so that she should not ruin her life with a living dead man and leave him, she was still young and could find herself another man with whom she would know happiness. But the kind woman cried and said that she could not leave him in trouble, in other, perhaps cold and evil hands of a stranger.
Many years passed like this. They lived together. Their friends abandoned them. The woman fed, washed, and washed her husband. The husband was silent the whole time. The woman suffered, often cried at night, began to pray to God to save her from torment, but nothing changed in her life.
Already gray and beginning to age a little, former friends began to drop by again. “Isn’t it time for you to think about God? Soon He will call us, and you don’t even go to church, and you will die a sinner and burn in hell!” Some invited her to the Orthodox Church, others to the Catholic Church, and others to sing, clapping and dancing in the now fashionable church where the pastor was preaching. She had many friends of different nationalities, and everyone suddenly began to believe in God and invited her to different churches and societies, but “It’s strange,” the woman thought, “why do they want me to leave my husband again and go to God with them? They all say: “Why do you need such a husband? God will take care of him, and you must save your soul.”
Probably, a new attack from her friends, who had now become religious, stirred up her suffering, and she decided to go with her friends to the Orthodox Church, because the majority of her homeland had always been in the Orthodox faith, and the woman, on the advice of her friends, left her husband to God, let Him take care of him, because God must take care of the weak and the suffering. The woman spent the whole day and all night in church and kept praying that God would help her husband and help her find God. In the morning, when the first ray of sun fell on her tear-stained face, she heard a voice inside herself:
“Oh, woman! Why are you asking for something that you have had for a long time? Don't you know that God cares for those who suffer? Tell me, hasn’t your husband been fed, washed, and treated with kind words over these years?”
“Yes, I know, I tried, but I’m not God!”
“Don’t you know that man is the temple of God and that God lives in the soul of man, and that what a good man does is done by God himself? So who are you? Why are you looking for God within these walls if He is within you? Most people who come here don't believe in God. Hypocrisy is the essence of their life."
The sun hid behind the morning snow-white cloud, and the woman woke up. There were no friends for a long time; no one wanted to pray all night. She hurried home.
The husband, seeing her, said for the first time, rejoicing: “Glory to God! I thought that you had left me, and I began to pray to God to come and take me. But you appeared like the sun, and I immediately felt warm. And, although I cause you suffering and suffer myself, I no longer want God to take me away!”
While caring for her husband, she smiled at her thoughts and was happy.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru