"In trouble, we remembered you"


He does it from time to time. He takes his sieve and begins to sift. He tests us and, at the same time, teaches us. “In trouble we remembered you,” (Isaiah 26:16), says the Prophet Isaiah. In the midst of troubles and temptations we remembered you, Lord! During the Occupation, but also after that, we drew closer to God. I remember my homeland, Messinia, when, somewhere around 1947, earthquakes occurred again, but not as devastating as the last ones that tested us. The churches were filled even then! After a “shake”, we all start running, then, after a while, we forget about God again.

When the 1981 earthquake struck, a friend from Athens, a doctor, told me that at that very moment a certain acquaintance of his was arguing with his wife and was using all sorts of profanity. His wife was saying to him: “Don’t blaspheme, you unfruitful one, don’t blaspheme, because God will bring fire down from heaven!” He continued. At that moment, however, the earthquake came, which made him immediately say: “Lord, have mercy on me! Lord, have mercy on me!”

Many times, when we have everything at our fingertips, we forget about God. As the Scripture says about the people of Israel: “And he was satisfied and forsook his beloved; he grew fat and grew fat, and forsook the God who made him” (Deuteronomy 32:15).

God gave everything to Israel, fed him well, made him fat, gave him peoples around him to conquer, gave him land, gave him everything – and he left him, fled after others. Many times God allowed him to be enslaved, so that he could return to Him.

God, therefore, honors our freedom and lets us do what we want, because freedom is His gift, and God does not deny Himself, does not take back the gift He has given. At the same time, God loves us because we are His children. When we misuse our freedom, He gives us a nudge, so that we can recover.

If we do not come to our senses, then, on the day of Judgment, “we will receive what we deserve” (Luke 23:41).

Archimandrite Epiphanius Theodoropoulos

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