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\u201c\u2026everyone experiences storms in this life: the wise, the foolish; the rich, the poor; the Jews, the Gentiles; the slaves, the free; the Christians, the pagans. No one escapes them. Storms are the trials and tribulations of this life: illness, a lost job, and angry spouse, an impatient parent, an uncooperative child, the death of a loved one, a haughty priest, a rude store clerk, a traffic jam, a burned dinner, political and cultural unrest, a pandemic. Some storms are minor inconveniences and others are life-shattering tragedies. Strangely, sometimes we react more immaturely to the little annoyance than we do to devastating adversity. Storms, Jesus is telling us, reveal something about us, about our character, about who we are, about what we value and what we depend on. The first and simplest lesson of today\u2019s reading, then, is that we should attentively notice how we react to the storms in our lives. Do not excuse, explain, or evaluate; just notice. Storms become like mirrors for our souls, and if we pause to look into this mirror we will learn something about ourselves, about our inner life. Self-knowledge, divinely revealed in life\u2019s storms, provides the raw materials that we offer to God for His healing touch.<\/p>\n
So we all have been given the divine instruction needed to build our homes so as to withstand the varied storms that we are certain to face throughout our lives. The only question we need to confront\u2026 is how we will respond to that revelation. The question is always, have I responded to the revelation given to me? For the one who faithfully responds to the little he has been given will be given more, but the one who ignores life\u2019s subtle gifts squanders the precious building.\u201d<\/p>\n
– Burning Bush newsletter, Summer 2020<\/p>\n
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**We are pleased to include writings from modern American Monasteries from time to time as well as our traditional Elders**<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201c\u2026everyone experiences storms in this life: the wise, the foolish; the rich, the poor; the Jews, the Gentiles; the slaves, the free; the Christians, the pagans. No one escapes […]<\/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-8923","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\/8923","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=8923"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8925,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8923\/revisions\/8925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}