I’m Busy
In one village, there lived a large family – a husband, a wife and four children. All his life the master of the house worked hard to meet the needs of his near and dear.
Every Sunday, his wife took the children to the church service. However, the head of the family refused to go to church. When his wife asked him why he did not go, he used to say, "You go. And I'm busy."
The master of the house had a habit. Whatever the man started doing, major or minor, he would say, "Lord, help me!" or "With Lord's help!" Without these words, he did not proceed to any work. Therefore, during his long life he turned to God a large number of times, and a large number of things he did with God's help.
And now it is time for the man to die.
– Let me call a priest, – cautiously suggested the wife, – so that you could confess and take communion.
After his wife's words, the man thought. For a moment, the whole life rolled back in his mind’s eye – at work and worry. He remembered how many times his wife had suggested him going to church, and how many times he had excused himself saying he was busy.
Suddenly, the man made an effort, with great difficulty got out of bed and said to his wife:
- Do not call the priest. I'll go to church myself. The Lord so many times came to me, and I to him – never!
Then he turned to the children and said:
– However busy you are, do not miss a chance to come to God. Remember – God is much busier than us, but He always helps us as soon as we turn to Him!
Read also
The God Who walked into suffering and pain
In the fifth century, the empire was torn apart by a question that cut deeper than philosophy – could the Creator suffer? This was not an abstract quarrel of scholars, but a fault line running through an entire civilization, where the austere logic of antiquity collided with the startling claim of the Gospel: that God had entered the realm of pain.
Bykivnia: Where the state buried the truth for fifty years
For decades, a forest on the outskirts of Kyiv hid the traces of NKVD executions. Here, the state tried to bury not only the bodies, but memory itself – beneath quicklime, young pines, and the findings of obedient commissions.
Nestorianism: the heresy of professors
How did a brilliant mind turn faith into a blueprint? The story of Patriarch Nestorius is an example of how logic fails before mystery and how schisms are born.
Mount Quarantal: the trial of stillness
The rocky summit stands like a wall between the noise of Jericho and the silence of the desert. Here silence is like a mirror, revealing what we are truly made of.
Heroes beneath a low ceiling: When literature forgets the eternal
Modern prose increasingly resembles an emotional first-aid kit deprived of hope. Why does the substitution of moral choice with trauma take the sky away from us and leave literature cramped and airless?
Paper fortress: The Gregorian schism of 1925
In the 1920s, the cathedrals of Yekaterinburg stood empty with full support from the authorities. How an OGPU project to create a compliant church collapsed against the resistance of believers.