Written after time spent contemplating Christian divisiveness online, including in the Orthodox world, forgetful of the teachings of Christ and examples of so many great and loving saints who’ve gone before us.
Does the God who creates all the intricacies of the creation around us fail to love and care for us?
Does the God who so delicately paints the feathers of even the smallest bird in such beautiful colors fail to love and care for us?
Does the God who crowns the deer, elk, and moose with noble crowns of antlers fail to love and care for us?
Does He who flung all the stars into the sky to shine down on us at night and show the way to travelers, fail to love and care for us?
Does He who causes the field to ripen with grain and trees with fruit and flocks with young fail to love and care for us?
Does He who creates the universe with His own hands, and continues holding it in His hands, stewarding it to its destiny, fail to love and care for us?
Who would He leave behind – except those who truly do not want to be with Him?
Why would He leave behind those who truly do, who hear and respond to His voice wherever they are in life, with whatever means they have?
Would the God who took the pains to incarnate in human form, live and work as a human being, feel hunger and tired and thirsty as a human being, teach and work miracles for us as a human being, suffer such a death for us as a human being, and rise again so gloriously, fail to gather in any who truly love Him?
Why do we fight and bicker amongst ourselves about who sits on His left and right, about who is greatest, who is first, among us? Why do we risk being last, in our boasting of being first?
Why do we not honor the great work He has done, the great work He continues to do, and He alone, to save us?
Why do we fail to love one another as one, as He commanded us on the eve of His saving death? To love one another even unto death as He loves us? To reach out to one another with what we so desperately need – instead of condemning each other for not having it?
Why do we fail – when He does not?
The first of all Christian virtues is humility. Without this virtue, no other virtue can be acquired, and the spiritual perfection of a Christian is unthinkable. Everything good in us is from God. …Each of us must remember this, for it is not in vain that the Holy Scripture says: “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (1 Pet 5:5).
Metropolitan Philaret (Voznesensky), Living According to God’s Will, Holy Trinity Publications (2021), p. 29.
Wellsprings 