A New cast of characters...Where Love is, God Is

I've always had a desire to somehow do a retelling of this Leo Tolstoy short story in one format or another. I'm working up some roughs for a picture book adaptation of the story and began to work on character designs. Here are the rough shapes of the main characters...

The story takes place in the 1880's in Russia and is based around the Martin Cobbler desiring to see God. God comes to Martin in a dream and says "look out you window tomorrow and you shall see me".

Martin dutifully does so, but never does "see" God. He does however encounter an old soldier crippled and freezing in the cold while shoveling snow to earn his keep, A peasant girl and her infant, and a woman who has her an apple pilfered from her cart by a peasant boy.... In each case Martin, intervenes with kindness, love and gentleness.


That night martin goes to bed disappointed that he didn't see God, and thinking that he was vaguely delusional. God appears to him that night saying that he DID come. God said that in serving the least of people that he had indeed served God himself. So Martin's dream had indeed come true...


Now as much as I like this story, I am going to tinker with the premise, just a bit. I think Martin's motivation for seeing God is quite devotional and coming from a perspective that desires closeness with God. This is after years of recovering from grief of losing wife and all his chldren to death...I want to approach this as a man angry at God who wants to see God so that he can question him...more like Job. And in the process of showing love, kindness and generousity Martin's heart is softened and he see's that opening ourselves up to other's needs can indeed open us up to God and in turn heal our grief...


It adds another layer to the story and I think in many ways is more accessible to how the average person deals with faith and grief. Now all I need to do is find out if the story is public domain....!