The Lord is faithful, who shall stablish you, and guard you from the evil one. Do not marvel as though some strange thing were happening to you. These things are written for our admonition. Consider the traitor Judas, one of the twelve, who walked with the Lord yet delivered Him up for thirty pieces of silver. What profit have we from knowing this? Much. When we know whence it was that he arrived at this deadly counsel, we are on our guard that we too suffer not the like. Whence came he to this? From the love of money. A grievous tyrant indeed is the love of gold, terrible in putting the soul beside itself. This madness drives men to betray trust, to sell honor, to abandon fidelity for a fleeting shine. The woman who left you, immediately moving to a man flaunting his wealth, his cars, his boats, his cash, you see the same disease. She cheated and departed because her heart was drunk with the passion for riches, not because your worth failed. Do not let this double betrayal, added to the false allegations against your profession, cause you to despair. For ye shall be hated, and shall be betrayed, and the love of many shall wax cold. This is the intestine war Christ foretold, when false brethren and deceivers arise, and iniquity abounds. You have tasted these very sorrows.
But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved. You ask for prayer to relieve your suffering and restore your calling. Good. Yet neither ought we, having committed everything to the prayers of the Saints, to be idle ourselves, nor to run into wickedness, nor to let our minds be softened by worldly care. Strengthen your mind. Chase from it the rumination that makes you dull of hearing to God’s voice. The pain is visceral, you say. That is why you must not allow this betrayal to root you in bitterness or fill you with dreams of vengeance, which is a poison sweeter to the flesh than honey. The Lord permitted this, not to crush you, but that you might seek the unfailing consolation. When He was betrayed, He went willingly, even going to meet the traitor, manifesting that His suffering was according to a divine dispensation. He did all things for our amendment. So now, let your trial amend you. Let it drive you not to despair over a wife lost, but to a sober longing for what is truly good.
You desire a caring, loyal, trustworthy, and faithful wife with whom to create a family and serve the Lord. This is no sinful request, yet be on guard lest the desire itself become a worldly care that confuses you. Do not look out upon the world with the eyes of envy, seeing the brazen happiness of those who prosper in their greed. Woe to the man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed; it had been good for that man if he had not been born. Their end is destruction. Your portion is to work the works of Him who called you. And we have confidence in the Lord touching you, that ye both do and will do the things which we command you. Do you wish to serve the Lord, to heal the suffering, to do His work? Then be healing now in the darkness. The greatest work of faith is not performed in a restored career, but in a soul that blesses when afflicted, that trusts when stripped of defense. Do this, and you are already doing the Lord’s work.
The Lord is faithful, who shall stablish you. He has chosen you to salvation; He does not deceive you, nor will He suffer you utterly to perish. But as He promised He saves: if you are willing and hear Him, not like a stock or stone, but actively pressing into His love. See how even now, through the lies, the loss, the visceral pain, the generation of the faithful remains, cut off by none of these tumults. Not famine, not pestilence, not false allegations, not treacherous lovers, not the waxing cold of human affection, over this generation shall nothing prevail. Cry to Him, but let your cry be, "Stablish my heart in the love of God, and in the patience of Christ." In that patience, your livelihood, your calling, your future household, all these things shall be added as He sees fit, in a manner that no false accuser and no fleeting lover can ever steal.