What is the Providence of God? What is the right way to relate to the events of your own life? What does the story of righteous Joseph teach? How does the life of an individual person compare with the fate of humanity?
Friends, today we will talk about a very serious and important topic. True, I do not know a single topic that would be beyond seriousness, but, nevertheless, this one is the most important: about the Providence of God.
Providence is thinking ahead. The prefix "pro" means going forward, and the part "thinking" means thought; Providence is God's forward thinking. God knows what will be ahead, God foresees and foresees the future and does something in our life that we don’t like, that we don’t want, so unpleasant, strange, but, nevertheless, we need to come to terms with it, for the owners life is not us. Then, with the passage of time, we suddenly find out: that's what it was for, now, it turns out, how good it is. This is a cross for the human heart.
With God's help, let us say a few words about Providence, since we are under the weight of this concept and it concerns all of us.
For example, here is the story of the righteous Joseph. As you remember, Joseph had dreams. He told about these dreams with a trusting soul: that his father, mother and brothers would bow to him - he would be at the head, like the sun, and others - like the moon and stars; he will be a sheaf in the center of the field, and all the other sheaves around him will bow to him. With a trusting soul, he told what God revealed to him in a dream in images, and tried to restore in fortune-telling how it would be. And the brothers were jealous: "There comes the dreamer." The brothers wanted to kill him out of envy, and by this Joseph served as a type of Jesus Christ. To kill anyone who had done nothing wrong, only out of envy the relatives wanted - dear people. Thank God, Reuben saved him from death, but the brothers threw Joseph into a ditch, and then sold him into slavery, and he ended up in Egypt. Then there was a difficult scary story with Potiphar and his wife,with prodigal solicitation, with imprisonment. One way or another, but Joseph became the main person for the Pharaoh. He divined the dreams of not only Pharaoh, but also his fellow prisoners. He predicted the future. God was with him. Then, when the brothers came to Egypt, they did not recognize him, for he was glorious, combed, painted, dressed in Egyptian clothes. Was in favor. And he revealed to them: "I am Joseph, your brother." This is a very important point that concerns the relationship between Christ and the Jews, because they killed Christ for nothing, out of envy, and Christ loves them to this day. And they do not recognize Him, that He is the Messiah. Joseph in glory says to his poor brothers: “I am your brother”, and sooner or later it will be with the Jewish people: Jesus Christ will loudly say to the Jewish people: “I am your brother. I am your Messiah. " They will burst into tears and realize that they have killed Him wrong. But this is not the topic of our conversation now.
R. Leinweber. Selling Joseph into slavery.
The brothers thought: now Joseph will execute them, for he had every right to do so: he is in glory, they are nobody. He is an innocent victim who has become glorious - saved by God, and they are villains and murderers by design. But he told them the following words: "You are not guilty, it was God who sent me here to Egypt through your hands, so that now, when all the earth is hungry, you and our father and all the earth can eat, so that you can be saved, so that we can meet." He ascribes to God's Providence the villainy of the brothers, his sale into slavery, his misadventures, his rise, hunger throughout the earth, the arrival of brothers in Egypt for bread and their miraculous meeting - all this, he believes, is a kind of fabric woven from thread, and each separately is not clear why it is. Well, here's a thread, here's another thread. So what? This is not a carpet yet. One snowflake is not yet snow, one rain is not yet rain. But the threads woven together are already a carpet, and also a drawing on the carpet, and if you look from afar, it is a kind of woven panel. Then the understanding of some things already begins.
Joseph had the mind of God, that is why he said that God had arranged it all this way. This was, of course, philanthropy: the brothers could be executed - they deserved it. But he saw more. He thought: “God arranged it so that I did not die, I am alive, I am in glory, and now you have come to me. I need you, I love you, I have forgiven you, we are all alive and will be together."
Promotional video:
This is the Providence of God, when the Lord God uses all His wisdom to weave evil intentions, evil intentions of demons and people together, extinguish the fire with fire and ultimately bring everything to some kind of good and useful goal. We call this the Providence of God, knowledge in advance, foresight, good knowledge, bringing people, nations, tribes and an individual through history to a certain good goal. This is what the Providence of God is. You need to learn to notice it.
Now such a psychological workshop. Let each of you remember your life from childhood, from the moment whence the first glimpses of children's consciousness begin, and follow through the school years, class by class, port, battalion through the army, through the first love, through the first kiss, through the first scuffle, through the first sin, through the first tears of his life to this day. I think that most people in whom conscience has not died will understand that all this complex fabric, seemingly a weaving of accidents, is in fact a kind of single carpet where the Lord was in charge. I wanted to go there but missed the plane. I wanted to go there, but they stopped accepting documents there, so I entered here. I wanted to marry this girl, but she fell in love with my friend. I didn’t marry her, but a completely different one after five years. I wanted to go Northto enlist in oil wells, but they didn’t take me on the commission, my health was disappointing, and now I’m doing mathematics and, apparently, I’ll be doing it all my life. This interweaving of different events should show a person that there was a Vigilant and Guardian over him.
Every person's life is an unwritten book. And what about the book? Book of the Providence of God. Simply due to our inattention to life, we do not notice this constant above us, looking at us in the back of the head with the attentive gaze of the One who loves us.
The same goes for history. Among the sciences close to theology, there are some that are closest to it. For example, philology. Some of the fathers - not from the fathers of the Ancient, holy and radiant Church, but from modern teachers of the faith, and maybe even from Western teachers, cardinals or theologians … so, one of the fathers said: "Philology gives birth to theology." Right words. Take up the Hebrew language and you will love the Torah. Study Greek and fall in love with the gospel. Take up Latin and fall in love with Cicero. Do something else and start reading great books. And if you start reading great books, you yourself will be great, because reading about the greatness of intentions pulls a person to greatness. Philology gives birth to theology.
And besides philology, history is close to theology. History is a book of the Providence of God about individual nations and tribes. This is what we need to feel above ourselves. Where was I born? Where was I raised? Where did I live? Over there. Did you serve? Studied? Where do I live now? And if, as in geography, a map is drawn, it will be such a strange curve through many cities and towns. There is no such thing that was born here, stayed here, lived here all his life. Here you are in life. And what is it? This is such a secret pattern, drawing. This is a drawing of the Providence of God for man.
Stage of work on the embroidered portrait. Inside Out (artist: Cayce Zavaglia).
But you yourself are just an element of the overall picture. When you come up to the mosaic, you look at it point-blank: here is a pebble, here is a pebble … - I don't understand anything. You step back a couple of meters - that's a leg. And whose leg, I don't know. You move 10 meters away - this is a person's leg, but what kind of person I don't see. He walked 100 meters away - and you understand: the panel depicts the battle of Alexander the Great at Gaugamela or the battle of the Spartans with Xerxes. You need to move a serious distance from the drawing in order to understand the beauty of its individual threads. This is Providence. You can't see a face face to face.
And towards old age, people, evaluating their lived life, understand that they were kept, were observed, they were under cover, this was God's work. As Arseny Tarkovsky wrote:
Life took me under my wing
She took care and saved
I was really lucky.
Only this is not enough.
Everything that could come true
To me, like a five-fingered leaf, I fell right into my hands
Only this is not enough.
The leaves did not burn
The branches were not broken off …
Everything was burning light.
Only this is not enough.
Human life is a thread in a tapestry. This is a piece of mica in a large mosaic. Move away to a distance - and you will find out that you are sewn, inserted, mounted in a huge picture. This is Providence. You don't understand yourself. Why here, why am I here? Why was I born in the 20th century and not in the 19th? I would then study chemistry with Mendeleev and poetry with Blok. Why wasn't he born in the 17th – 18th centuries? In the musketeer regiment in France, along with d'Artagnan would serve. Why wasn't Columbus born together? I would have sailed from Spain to Latin America to lead the Papuans to the faith. Why am I here and not there? Because you are a small link in a huge picture. This is the Providence of God. You are the glass you need in color, in scale, in quality, in texture, inserted into one big picture. This is usually understood by the end of life. But it would be better to understand early.
Completed embroidered portrait (artist: Cayce Zavaglia).
Understand early that you are not forgotten, not abandoned, not thrown into chaos, that you are loved, interesting, needed by God exactly where you are, exactly where you are now. This is the Providence of God.
Read the history of the Church, the history of the world, the history of different countries, because, according to Elder Nectarios of Optina, history is the science that explains God's providence for entire nations. This is a book of the Providence of God operating in the world. Let us be attentive to the breathing of this Providence.
You want your daughter to marry a millionaire and she will marry an electrician. You want your son to be a theater and film actor, and he became a civil airline pilot. You want it, but it turns out - do not twitch. This is the Providence of God. It is not your will that is done in the world, but God's. "Thy will be done, Lord!" - must speak.
We will try to learn the Providence of God in the history of nations, in the history of the Church, in our personal history, looking back, in the history of our children and our neighbors, listening to their stories and confessions. Let us try not to violate all the providential actions of the Lord God in the world, so as not to be His enemy. We are a small pebble in a huge mosaic, the beauty of which can be understood only by moving the required distance.
Archpriest Andrei Tkachev