Not as you think, nor as I think: God provides
In Warsaw, in the days of the tsars and the kings of Europe, there lived a young peasant named Dobré. He was married with two children and worked for a landowner. Dobré was struck by severe back pain that kept him from doing the hard work of the fields. After giving him two months’ grace, when he still could not return to work as before, the landowner decided to dismiss him and ordered him to leave the house where he lived with his family, setting him a final deadline. Things became desperate for that poor family… Dobré was a true believer who trusted in the Lord’s promises, but this latest trial was more than he could understand, until the situation seemed impossible and the problem unsolvable. Still, he held on to the Lord’s promises and began to pray with pleading and tears.
A few days before the eviction date, he gathered his family and asked his wife and two children to kneel with him on the floor of the room and ask for mercy from God Almighty. After they had prayed with tears and pleading, they felt peace in their hearts. They sat down and began to sing a hymn whose refrain, translated, says: “Not as you think, nor as I think: God provides.” Only moments later they heard a tapping at a closed little window high up in the wall. Before he died a short time earlier, Dobré’s father had raised a raven, which would come back to their house from time to time to get some food.
When they opened the window, the raven came in with something shiny in its beak and dropped it on the floor. Dobré picked it up: it was a gold ring set with stones that looked very valuable. The family rejoiced at this gift and were sure it had come in answer to their prayer. But Dobré was troubled: perhaps he had no moral right to keep this ring when he didn’t know whose it was or how the raven had found it. He decided to go to the priest the next day to ask his advice, and he did. When the priest examined the ring, he found engraved inside it the name of its owner: “Stanislaus, King of Poland.” He decided to take Dobré to the king and arranged an audience. At the appointed time they met the king; the priest presented the ring to him and told him the story of this family and how, after they had prayed, the raven had brought it. The king was delighted to recover his ring, which he had lost on a hunting trip.
But he was even more moved by the plight of this family and by the strength of their faith and their honesty. He ordered that a beautiful little house be built for them on the royal estate, that a picture of a raven with a ring in its beak be painted above its door, and that the hymn’s refrain be written beneath the picture: “Not as you think, nor as I think: God provides.”
Father Gerard Abi Saab
Note: this is a popular edifying tale; its historical accuracy is not documented.
