Yesterday, after usual stressful day at work and then chasing to the court house to submit my papers only to find out it was closed, I came home to find my long-expected package from Russia with some books and movies.

One of the books I got was called “Every day is a gift from God. Diaries of an Orthodox priest”, reprinted from “Day by Day” of 1908. The author is unknown but what is very well knows is that Empress Alexandra Feodorovna was one of it’s most attentive and devoted readers. She got this book several years before the fearful events started to happen in Russia. And she did not part with it until the end of her life. This is known from the diaries she kept.

In November 1917 being in exile in Tobolsk she wrote to her friend: “Every morning I read the book you gave me seven years ago, “Day by Day”, which I like very much and find a lot of words of consolation in it”.

This is an awesome book to have for daily devotional readings. There’s an article for every day, short and to the point. I started reading it last night and found it hard to stop.

For today, for instance, December 2^nd Old Calendar, you’d read:

Father, I thank thee that thou hast

heard me (John 11, 41).

Isn’t it strange, that the Savior is thanking Father for something that He did not receive yet?

He is thanking God for raising Lazarus but he did not rise yet. Lazarus was still in a tomb, covered in burial cloth, and death prevailed and the prayer did not receive a visible answer yet.

What is the Lord  thanking the Heavenly Father for? Being one with Him, He’s sure that His prayer is accepted. By resurrecting Lazarus, Lord not only wanted to bring him back to life and make his relatives and friends happy, but also strengthen their faith in immortality of the soul and eternal life.

Immortality belongs to God, Lord would not let his creation die and the need to sing Paschal hymn arises by the sight of an open grave. Live image of departed stays with an orphaned family and moral image would guide them in their lives. So let us also, in a presence of death, praise the Lord with a great faith “Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me”.