Recently I visited with an old friend.
We had not talked together for several years. We were very much enjoying our conversation – recalling old friends – remembering some experiences…when my friend commented, ‘Why is that when one is having once in a lifetime experiences, those experiences only happen once? Why just once? Why just one time?
His question startled me. It’s a good question.
Why do we let busyness, the fast pace of life, so many distractions…get in the way of the things – the good things – we truly enjoy?
Recently we completed an Advent study done a little differently from previous years. We met in several people’s homes – three homes over a three-week period. And it went very well.
It was a good study. Yet it was so much more. It was an opportunity to enjoy being together as friends, just visiting, just relaxing, maybe talking with folks we see at church, so this was an opportunity to get to know them better, for them to get to know us better.
Maybe a day or so after the last of our Advent evenings together I started thinking about how much fun, how enjoyable that had been. I thought this will be one of those Christmases I especially remember – maybe even one of those “once in a lifetime experiences.”

Someone told me one time after I had brought a message. ‘Boy, you sure skip around in your messages!”’
Well, I guess maybe I do sometimes.

Not long ago I was wondering what would Heaven be like. After all eternity is a pretty long time. I suppose as one ages questions like this have more than just an academic interest.
And as I thought about that I recalled a Russian novel that I had read. The novel was sort of like one of those multi-episodes T.V. series that can be so engrossing that some of its fans engage in in “binge watching.” One becomes so entangled with the story, with the story as it affects one of the characters that one cannot stop at the end of one episode, one so wants to know what happens to that character, to that person, and just keeps going and going, one episode after another.
And so I was, page after page.” binge-reading” I suppose.
The book was “The Brothers Karamazov.” And it was about – as one would suspect – three brothers, the son of an old reprobate. It was set in the times it was written in by Dostoyevsky – the late 1800’s in Czarist Russian.
The youngest son, Alyosha, is sort wondering what to make of his life. He has been attracted to a local religious figure, an old monk in a nearby monastery, Elder Zossima. Alyosha is spending a lot of time at the monastery listening to Zossima. Zossima dies. The next day Alyosha leaves the monastery and does not return until late that night.
Let’s listen to Dostoyevsky as he continues his tale:
“It was very late, according to the monastery order, when Alyosha returned…the door keeper let him by a special entrance. It had struck nine o’clock…Alyosha timidly opened the door and went into the elder’s cell where his coffin was now standing. There was no one in the cell except Father Paissy, reading the gospel in solitude over the coffin… Alyosha turned to the right from the door to the corner, fell on his knees, and began to pray.
“His soul was overflowing but with mingled feelings…He saw that coffin before him, the hidden, dead figure so precious to him, but the weeping and poignant grief of the morning was no longer aching in his soul…He began praying almost mechanically. Fragments of thought floated through his soul, flashed like stars, and went out again at once, to be succeeded by others…
“But when he had begun to pray, he passed suddenly to something else and sank into thought, forgetting both the prayer and what had interrupted it. He began listening to what Father Paissy was reading, but worn out with exhaustion he gradually began to doze.
“” And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee,’ read Father Paissy. “And the mother of Jesus was there, and both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage.
“” Marriage? What’s that…A marriage!” floated through Alyosha’s mind. “There is happiness for her, too…She has gone to the feast…” Oh, what’s being read?”
“And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him; ‘They have no wine’…Alyosha heard.
“Ah, yes, I was missing that, and I didn’t want to miss it, I love that passage; it’s Cana of Galilee, the first miracle…Ah, that miracle! Ah that sweet miracle! It was not men’s grief but their joy Christ visited; He worked His first miracle to help men’s gladness, too…’[Zossima] he was always repeating that, it was one of his leading ideas…’There’s no living without joy,’…
“Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what has it to do with thee or me? Mine hour is not yet come.
“” His mother saith unto the servants; Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it…”
“Do it…Gladness, the gladness of some poor, very poor people…Of course they were poor, since they hadn’t wine enough even at a wedding…. And another great heart, that other great being His mother, knew that He had come not only to make His great terrible sacrifice. She knew that His heart was open even to the simple, artless merrymaking of some obscure…people…Ah, he is reading again…
“Jesus saith unto them, Fill the waterpots with water. And they filled them to the brim.
“And he saith unto them, Draw out now and bear it unto the governor of the feast, and they bare it.
“When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine and knew not whence it was (but the servants which drew the water knew), the governor of the feast called the bridegroom,
“And saith unto him: Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, that which is worse; but thou hast kept the good wine until now.”

“But what’s this, what’s this? Why is the room growing wider?…Ah, yes…it’s the marriage, the wedding…yes, of course. Here are the guests, here is the young couple sitting, and the merry crowd and…Where is the wise governor of the feast? But who is this? Who? Again, the walls are receding…Who is getting up there from the great table? What!…He here, too? But he’s in the coffin…but he’s here, too. He has stood up, he sees me, he is coming here…Oh, God!
“Yes, he went up to him – to him – he, the little, thin old man, with tiny wrinkles on his face, joyful and laughing softly. There was no coffin now, and he was in the same dress as he had worn yesterday sitting with them, when the visitors had gathered around him. His face was uncovered, his eyes were shining. How was this then, he too had been called to the feast. He too at the marriage of Cana in Galilee…
““We are rejoicing,” the little, thin old man went on. “We are drinking the new wine, the wine of new, great gladness; do you see how many guests? Here are the bride and bridegroom…Do you see our Sun; do you see Him?”
“” I am afraid…I dare not look,” whispered Alyosha. “Do not fear him. He is terrible in His Greatness, awful in His Sublimity, but infinitely merciful. He has made Himself like unto us from love and rejoices with us. He is changing the water into wine so that the gladness of the guests may not be cut short. He is expecting new guests; He is calling new ones unceasingly for ever and ever…\
He has made Himself like unto us from love and rejoices with us…He is calling us unceasing forever and ever to join Him in the wedding at Cana in Galilee
Amen.
I have quoted liberally from Dostoyevsky’s “The Brother Karamazov.” The best way to read it would be to start on Page 1 so one would gain the benefit of understanding in a deeper way the stories of the characters and their background. I encourage you to do so as I have shortened even this small passage – you would benefit of reading it in full.
I recommended it to my daughter. Later she told me she thought she would never be able to finish but did.
A shorter but excellent introduction to Dostoyevsky would be “The Gospel in Dostoyevsky” by Plough Publishing, 1988. Including this story and several others from the “Brothers” it also excerpts from others of his book. I recommend it to you.
Richard Robertson