You can either live and destroy (though it isn’t life, but dying) or you can live and create. First of all, of course, to create the very non-made temple within ourselves, which each of us must create during the period of our earthly life.
What are we living for? What is the main point of what we do? Of course, we can even move mountains – you don’t need to be especially clever for that. But to humble oneself and accept God’s will is difficult. When St. Silouan the Athonite was in his old age the brethren asked him: “Father, are you going to die?” – “No, I’m not. I have not yet humbled myself.” But we say that we have already humbled ourselves… We put in the word – meekness – very different concepts. As well as we do with the word “love”. We measure everything by our own merits. And during our life, these merits change, and what we needed, what we wanted earlier, is no longer relevant for us now. Now you regret that you have spent so much effort on something that you don’t really need. And so you think: “I should have spent my forces on something else.” However, unfortunately, you can’t live a life without mistakes, we learn from them.
What exactly do we mean by eternity? We live, but we are limited by time, space, daylight, and our well-being. But what is eternity? St. Nicholas lived a long time ago. But we say he is still with us, he is present in our life, in our daily routine. Probably, there is no such Orthodox person who haven’t got help from him. This saint rescued me from certain death. And I think he saves many people. This is eternity.
Having such power of our saints, how can we say like some people do: “I’m lonely, nobody needs me” and so on? It shows that in fact we live on our own. This is loneliness. A person builds a life for himself, but it turns out that everything is wrong – the design itself was wrong, and the efforts were wrong, too. We need to build it in another way. The more you give, the more you get. This is the formula, which Father Nikolay once told me, – “give more and take less”. It’s simple and genius. Nothing else is needed. But to live, guided by this formula, is possible only by practicing a spiritual life. And when there is no Spirit, when there is only flesh and blood, then we start to separate – this goes to me, that goes to you. We get entangled in this division and make fools of ourselves. That’s the whole philosophy. Just don’t make it more complicated than it is. Everything is so simple in God but we turn our life into some kind of puzzle and then say: “What should we do, how should we live?” As if there are many options. But there are no options! You either go toward God, or you hide from Him. And where can you hide from God? What is more, there’s the devil behind your back. You can’t hide from him either.
That’s why our life is simple in fact. We still have to get up, we still have to go and hope for our improvement. We must believe that God came to save us, to save me, even though I am the last sinner, and that His love is enough to purify and even sanctify my life.
If a person lives in eternity, he doesn’t need to share anything, to compare somebody with himself, to adapt to certain human standards (which won’t help us to find God for sure) but trust God and follow Him to the end.
He that endureth to the end shall be saved (Matthew 10: 22).
May the Lord save and protect us all. Christ is Risen!
