Hammer on Anvil '

Ivan Denisovich Shukov is a character in a novel by Russian author Alexsander Solzhenitsyn. Denisovich was a laborer in a work camp in post World War 2 Russia that was taken in part from some of the real life experiences that Solzhenitsyn had himself while living in the Russian gulags and work camps. We get to see one single day in the life of this prisoner during the course of the book. Nothing extreme, nothing extraordinary happens on this day, but it certainly gives a person a good idea about what it must have been like if only on the very good days, to put it mildly he doesn't live an easy life even on these "good days".
Towards the end of the book one of the other prisoners, Alyosha, observes Denisovich at the end of a long day offer a sort of generic prayer,
" Glory be to Thee, O Lord. Another day over. Thank you I'm not spending tonight in the cells. Here it is still bearable."
…
Alyosha heard Shukov's whispered prayer, and, turning to him: "There you are, Ivan Denisovich, your soul is begging to pray. Why don't you give it its freedom?"
…
"Well, Alyosha," he said with a sigh, "it's this way. Prayers are like those appeals of ours. Either they don't get through or they're returned with 'rejected' scrawled across 'em."
Alyosha goes on to encourage him, "But, Ivan Denisovich, it's because you pray too rarely and badly at that. Without really trying. That's why your prayers stay unanswered. One must never stop praying. If you have real faith you tell a mountain to move and it will move…"
Ivan retorts that even with his faith and praying that the political turmoil and war still found Alyosha in the same work camp as himself trying to imply that his own prayers weren't effective at all. What good has it gained him if it could not save him from the same fate? Alyosha replies that that is not what they prayed for, but instead simply for our daily bread.
"Our ration, you mean?" asked Shukov
…
"Ivan Denisovich, you shouldn't pray to get parcels, or for extra stew, not for that. Things that man puts a high price on are vile in the eyes of Our Lord. We must pray about things of the spirit--that the Lord Jesus should remove the scum of anger from our hearts…"
Ivan goes on to talk about the hypocrisies and corruption of his old home town priest and how horrible of a person this priest was.
"Why are you talking to me about priests?…It's because their faith is unstable that they're not in prison."
Ivan continues that he's not really against God, but why should anyone be filled with the idea of paradise or hell. Why do you take us for fools? That even still however much Alyosha were to pray that it doesn't shorten his term in the work camp, that he is still very much here in the same condition as himself.
"Oh, you mustn't pray for that either," said Alyosha, horrified. "Why do you want freedom? In freedom your last grain of faith will be choked with weeds. You should rejoice that you're in prison. Here you have time to think about your soul. As the apostle Paul wrote: 'Why all these tears? Why are you trying to weaken my resolution? For my part I am ready not merely to be bound, but even to die for the name of the Lord Jesus.'"
Shukov gazed at the celiing in silence. Now he didn't know either whether he wanted freedom or not. At first he'd longed for it. Every night he'd counted the days of his stretch--how many had passed, how many were coming. And then he'd grown bored with counting. And then it became clear that men like him wouldn't ever be allowed to return home, that they'd be exiled. And whether his life would be any better there than here--who could tell?
Freedom meant one thing to him--home.
Alyosha was speaking the truth. His voice and his eyes left no doubt that he was happy in prison.
"You see, Alyosha," Shukov explained to him, "somehow it works out all right for you: Jesus Christ wanted you to sit in prison and so you are--sitting there for His sake. But for whose sake am I here? Because we weren't ready for war in forty-one? For that? But was that my fault?
They're interrupted for a time, but then Ivan continues shortly there after. - Alyosha returned. Impractical, that's his trouble. Makes himself nice to everyone, but doesn't know how to do favors that get paid back.
Denisovich allows the distraction to jolt him out of introspection and writes off what Alyosha had to say because he thinks his impracticality discredits the message. He lets back in the realities of his everyday habits and struggles. Granted these are genuinely what he must face each day, but the message of something greater beyond these toils he cannot bring himself to hope for. He fails to recognize that Alyosha's hope in Christ is the most practical thing of all. "Exactly at the instant when hope ceases to be reasonable it begins to be useful"-GKC
Has our freedom cost us our souls? No one has it truly easy, but for instance relative to those in the gulags and work camps certainly our lives are quite easy. Has our easy living cost us something we didn't even realize we were paying such a high price for? Our constant distractions, busy lives, material possession; have they lessened our focus and our attention on the truly important teachings of Christ?
Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”