Earthly happiness

      EARTHLY HAPPINESS

                "Whoever endures illness
                with patience and gratitude,
                it is counted to them as a feat
                or even more."
                (St. Seraphim of Sarov)

 –  Everyone seeks happiness. Isn’t that a fact?
Why then sound the alarm about the past?

 –  Earthly happiness can exist without God.
But God gives us –  eternal happiness, like an act

of love for Him...
And for enemies, in the end.

 –  That life –  is beyond time.
Here, we couldn’t

even –  not enemies –
relatives –  not recall their evil.

 –  It’s not so simple to fulfill the Commandment of Love
at the first desire.

Earthly passion, drawing close to the end,
with time, grows shallow... and we destroy

our fear of losing a dear face
and the godly fear that we do not love Him.

The Commandments –  in the tightness of Fasting.
The Thorny Path –  not our highway, not the road,

where the eternal search for God without the Cross
is the eternal search for happiness...

But –  without God.