Three words that define exhaustively the contemporary culture of the world, even in countries where the legal framework of American style liberty is lagging behind, because culture is transmitted faster than law, due to media and marketing.

These three words define everything from the acceptance of deviant sexuality to aborting babies to death on demand to gluttony to flagrant waste to… you name it.

“Anything you want to do, I’m happy if you make it go right, and it’s true if it makes you happy, you know, it makes the world more bright, and you shall have liberty, liberty, it always was yours anyway.” The quoted words are put in the mouth of God in a song by the group Incredible String Band (Cutting the Strings), and I wonder now if they knew (back then, 1970’s) what they really meant. It’s obvious, though, what they mean now.

Just as you posted this, Fr Milovan, our brother David Dickens, an Orthodox online poet, posted these words…

“Christ is not for the having of things
Foolish man, you will not find him there

I tell you a full belly is no revelation
Not even if fed from plates of gold”

(http://nothinghypothetical.wordpress.com/)

What the East Germans found out in aping the American model “because they could” is what David is hinting at in this poem, don’t you think?

“Beloved, the power of a prayer is not to be measured by its length. The most powerful prayer may also be the most brief.”

Oh how true with regard to our prayers. Our Lord knew and admonished that one must guard against the potential for hypocrisy, standing and praying to be heard of men. Lengthy yet vain repetitions that gets no closer to the ear of God than if a word was never thought.

It would seem that many have nothing more than fleshly desires when they would petition the prayer of another, and generally that desire is nothing more than that one should ask amiss, with little or no desire for the will of God. I would liken such prayer as spiritual pleasantries instead of “nevertheless not our will be done, but thy will”.

As I study those martyred for the cause of the gospel, I find this most unusual spirit liken to that in Saint Demetrios s spirit of blessing and encouragement and words of strength and confidence in the face of great persecution. As the words that Richard Wurmbrand spoke to his captors while imprisoned for his stand for Christ…

Place your hand on my heart, and if you feel a rapidly beating heart that is immersed in fear, you can rest assured that there is no God, but if you detect a calm and gentle Spirit, rest assured it is because I am resting in Him…. paraphrased on my part.

This same Spirit we find in young Nestor and that not the power of the arm of the flesh.

Thanks for the post.

Peace….
brother malachi