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Sudden Tempest


Wednesday. [Col. 1:18-23; Luke 8:22-25] When they got in the ship to sail to the other side of the lake, did the apostles think that they would meet with a tempest and expose their lives to danger? Meanwhile, a tem?pest suddenly arose and they did not expect to remain alive. Such is the path of our life! You do not know how or from where misfor?tune will sweep in, capable of de?stroying us. Air, water, fire, beasts, man, bird, house, in a word — ev?erything around us could suddenly be transformed into a weapon for our death. From this comes a law: live in such a way that every minute you are ready to meet with death and fearlessly enter into its realm. This minute you are alive, but who knows whether you will be alive the next? Keep yourself according to this thought. Do everything you have to, according to the routines of your life, but in no way forget that you could immediately move to a country from which there is no re?turn. Forgetting this will not post?pone the determined hour, and in?tentional expulsion of this decisive upheaval from your thoughts will not lessen the eternal meaning of what will happen after it. Commit your life and all into the hands of God; spend hour after hour with the thought that each hour is the last. From this the number of empty pleasures will decrease; while at death this deprivation will be im?measurably recompensed with a joy to which there is nothing equal in the joys of life.

Saint Theophan the Recluse


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