Matt_za ☦️ 🇿🇦🇬🇷

"To a certain childless woman regarding children: You have a bitter complaint because you don't have children. You accuse your husband, attributing it to him. You even dare to accuse your Creator. Do not put sin on your soul, but submit to the will of God. Because God is the original cause of childbearing while couples are only paths through which children enter the world, according to God's providence and according to His goodwill. It happens sometimes that God doesn't give fruit even to the most righteous couples, as in the case of Abraham and Sarah or of righteous Joachim and Anna. It happens, however, that He doesn't give fruit because of the sins of the one or the other side of the couple, as for example in the case of Melchol, the wife of David. The young wife of David, daughter of King Saul, looking one time from her window saw her husband who, from religious enthusiasm, was dancing in front of the arc of the covenant and she utterly despised him, removing him from her heart. That contempt within her heart, she did not recognize, neither did anyone in the world hear her except for the All-Seeing God. Because of this He punished Melchol, the wife of David: “and to Melchol, the daughter of Saul, there was not a child until the day of her death.” (I Kings 6: 16-23) So examine your heart also and your husbands heart and both of you see if you have sinned before the Lord in something. If you find no wrong-doing upon yourselves then, without a doubt, it has to do with the will of God for you to not have your own fruit so that you can embrace other people's orphans as your own children, which is a great deed before the Lord. There is still alive among us an acquaintance, a lady who did not have children, but since the beginning of the war she would gather the orphans that had neither mother nor father, hundreds of them, and she took care of them and shaped them as if she herself had given birth to them. Sometimes she confessed and said, “in my life I loved nothing as much as children. When I was still a girl, I wanted to marry to have children, and really, many children. However they were not given to me. I married two times but I did not have children. But God fulfilled that desire a hundred-fold and granted me, up until now, about a thousand children. And now in my old age, I am overjoyed that God did not grant me my own children because, if we hypothesize that I had two, three, or even ten children, I would have spent all of my time with them and so I would have lost the pleasure and happiness to call a thousand other children my own. I thank God for this!” You also pray to God with a pure heart, the way Joachim and Anna prayed, because His mercy is inexpressible and He can give you fruit. If He doesn’t give it to you, do not get angry. Give, then, your love to the children whose mothers have died, and you will be called 'mother' and not 'barren-one' in the kingdom of eternal righteousness and beauty." -- Saint Nikolai Velimirović, The Truth About Abortions, published (in Greek) by Orthodox Kypseli, Thessaloniki, Greece, 2011; page 69-71; translated by OrthodoxProLife