![\"\"](\"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/333867.b-300x200.jpg\")
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cA man often thinks that the Creator demands great things of him, that the Gospel insists on complete self-sacrifice, the abolition of one\u2019s personhood, etc., as a condition of faith. A man is so frightened by this that he begins to be afraid of becoming acquainted with God, of drawing near to God, and hides himself from God, not even wishing to look into God\u2019s Word. \u201cIf I can\u2019t do anything important for God, then I\u2019d just better stay away from things spiritual, stop thinking about eternity, and live \u2018in a normal way\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
There exists at the entrance to the spiritual realm a \u201chypnosis of great deeds:\u201d one must either do some big thing or do nothing. And so people do nothing at all for God or for their souls! It is very strange\u2014the more a man is devoted to the little things of life, the less he wishes to be honest or pure or faithful to God in those same little things. And, moreover, each one must adopt a correct attitude toward little things if one wishes to come near to the kingdom of heaven.<\/p>\n
The lesser, easier good was left on this earth for man by the Creator Himself, who took all the greater good upon Himself. Whosoever does the lesser, the same creates\u2014and through him the Creator Himself creates\u2014the greater good. Of our little good the Creator makes His Own great good. For as our Lord is the Creator who formed all things from nothingness, so is He more able to create the greater good from the lesser.<\/p>\n
Through such lesser, easy work, done with the greatest simplicity, a man is accustomed to the good and begins to serve it with his whole heart, sincerely, and in this way enters into an atmosphere of good, lets down the roots of his life into new soil, the soil of the good.\u201d<\/p>\n
– Orthodox Heritage Vol 1<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cA man often thinks that the Creator demands great things of him, that the Gospel insists on complete self-sacrifice, the abolition of one\u2019s personhood, etc., as a condition of faith. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-modern-orthodox-elders","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8367"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8367\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8369,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8367\/revisions\/8369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}