{"id":227,"date":"2018-09-12T14:07:00","date_gmt":"2018-09-12T14:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.smallpage.online\/2018\/09\/12\/parable-of-day-first-step-to-god\/"},"modified":"2019-03-04T13:10:54","modified_gmt":"2019-03-04T13:10:54","slug":"parable-of-day-first-step-to-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/2018\/09\/parable-of-day-first-step-to-god","title":{"rendered":"Parable of the Day: The First Step to God"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"featured_img aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/3335.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"640\" height=\"384\" border=\"0\" data-original-height=\"482\" data-original-width=\"800\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">There was a man who came to an elder and said:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>\u201cI\u2019d like to find the way to God. Help me!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The elder looked at the man attentively and asked him:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>\u201cFirst of all, please tell me if you have ever loved anyone?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The guest replied:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>\u201cI\u2019m not interested in worldly things like love and the like. I want to find God!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>\u201cPlease think again: have you ever loved a woman, a child, or just anyone else?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>\u201cDidn\u2019t I tell you that I\u2019m not your regular guy?! I\u2019m a person who is seeking God, and I don\u2019t care about anything else.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The elder\u2019s eyes were filled with deep sadness, and he responded:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\"><em>\u201cIt\u2019s impossible. First you have to learn what it means to genuinely love anybody. It will be your first step to God. You are asking about the final step but you haven\u2019t yet climbed the first one.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><em>Translated by The Catalog of Good Deeds<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There was a man who came to an elder and said: \u201cI\u2019d like to find the way to God. Help me!\u201d The elder looked&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20528,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[71],"tags":[13,14],"class_list":["post-227","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories-and-parables","tag-orthodox-wisdom","tag-stories-and-parables"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/3335-1.jpg","views":{"total":83,"cached_at":"","cached_date":1768429257},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paPyw9-3F","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20529,"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227\/revisions\/20529"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catalog.obitel-minsk.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}