The Richest Man in Russia Who Couldn't Buy Peace

In 1879, Leo Tolstoy was arguably the most famous writer alive. War and Peace and Anna Karenina had brought him international acclaim, a vast estate at Yasnaya Polyana, and more wealth than most Russians could imagine. Yet in his memoir A Confession, Tolstoy described a despair so consuming he hid ropes from himself for fear he would end his own life.

He had spent decades pouring himself into what Isaiah calls "that which is not bread" — literary ambition, philosophical systems, the pleasures of aristocratic life. None of it satisfied. "Is there any meaning in my life that will not be destroyed by my inevitable death?" he wrote. He found no answer in all his brilliance.

Then Tolstoy began watching the peasant farmers who worked his land. These men and women owned almost nothing, yet they lived with a quiet, unshakeable faith. They didn't purchase their peace through achievement or intellect. They simply received it — freely — from God.

This is the astonishing invitation of Isaiah 55: "Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat." The Almighty doesn't sell what we need most. He gives it away. Tolstoy, with all his rubles and royalties, couldn't buy what illiterate peasants already possessed. God's economy runs on grace, not currency — and His ways remain, as the prophet reminds us, immeasurably higher than our own.