sunflower

Everyone is familiar with the sunflower. It always turns its yellow head towards the sun; it’s drawn towards it, and from this it has received its name. 

But it happens that a sunflower ceases to turn towards the sun. Then people who are experienced in this matter say that it’s begun to spoil; a worm has appeared in it and it needs to be cut down quickly.

A soul that hungers for the statutes and the mercies of God is similar to a sunflower and strives for and reaches out for God.

 If it ceases to seek Him, it perishes.

Elder Barsanuphius of Optina

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war and the world

--> Just as people do not enter a war in order to enjoy war, but in order to be saved from war, so we do not enter this world in order to enjoy this world, but in order to be saved from it. People go to war for the sake of something greater than war. So we also enter this temporal life for the sake of something greater: for eternal life. And as soldiers think with joy about returning home, so also Christians constantly remember the end of their lives and their return to their heavenly fatherland.


St. Nicholas of Serbia