Do you remember Nina?
She was the brave girl who walked all the way to the land of Georgia, carrying a little cross made of grapevines. She lived in a tent under a bramble bush in the king's garden, and she told everyone she met the wonderful news that Jesus loves them. Already, many people had come to believe — even the king's gardener and his wife, who had been given a baby after years of praying.
But the two most important people in all of Georgia still had not believed. They lived in the great palace right next to Nina's garden.
They were King Mirian and Queen Nana.
This is the story of how they came to know the love of God. And it is full of surprises.
Let us begin with Queen Nana.
Queen Nana lived in the palace, surrounded by riches. She had soft silk dresses and golden crowns and servants to bring her anything she wanted. But Queen Nana was not happy, and she was not kind. She bowed down to the cold idols, just like everyone else. She had everything a person could want — and yet her heart was empty.
Then one day, Queen Nana became very, very sick.
It came on suddenly. One morning she was well, and by evening she was lying in her great bed, burning with fever, too weak to lift her head. The finest doctors in all of Georgia came hurrying to the palace. They tried every medicine they knew. They tried every cure. But nothing helped. The queen grew worse and worse.
The doctors carried the queen to the idols and laid her before the cold statues. "Help her! Heal her!" the people begged the idols. But of course the idols did nothing, because they could do nothing. They were only metal and stone.
Day after day, the queen lay in her bed, growing weaker. Everyone in the palace was frightened. Everyone thought she would surely die.
Now, the queen's servants had heard whispers about the gentle young woman who lived in the garden — the one who prayed to a different God, the God who had given the gardener and his wife a baby, the God who answered prayers. And one of the servants came timidly to the queen's bedside.
"Your Majesty," she whispered, "there is a young woman living in the garden. Her name is Nina. They say her God is powerful and good — that He heals the sick and answers prayers. Perhaps... perhaps she could help you."
The queen was so sick and so desperate that she was willing to try anything. "Bring her to me," she whispered. "Please. Bring me the woman from the garden."
So they sent for Nina.
But Nina did not come to the palace as a grand and important person. She came humbly, as she always did.
"I am no doctor," Nina told the servants gently. "I have no medicine. But I will come, and I will pray. And it is not I who heals — it is my God, the Lord Jesus Christ. If the queen is to be made well, it will be His doing, not mine."
They brought Nina into the queen's room. There lay Queen Nana, pale and weak upon her bed, her eyes dull with fever.
Nina did not climb up onto a fine chair. She knelt down on the floor beside the bed, the way a humble servant would. She took out her little cross of vines and held it in her hands. And she began to pray.
She prayed quietly and earnestly, pouring out her whole heart to God. "O Lord Jesus Christ," she prayed, "You are the Healer of soul and body. You love this woman, even though she does not yet know You. Have mercy on her, Lord. Make her well — not so that people will praise me, but so that she will know that You are the true and living God, and that she will love You all the days of her life."
Then Nina gently laid her cross of grapevines upon the sick queen.
And something wonderful happened.
The fever began to cool. The color came back into the queen's cheeks. Her eyes grew bright and clear again. She drew a deep breath — and then she sat up in her bed, strong and well, as though she had never been sick at all.
Queen Nana was healed.
She stared at her own hands. She touched her own face. She could hardly believe it. Then she looked at Nina — the humble young woman kneeling beside her bed with the little cross of vines — and her eyes filled with tears.
"You have made me well," the queen said.
"Not I," said Nina, shaking her head with a smile. "It was the Lord Jesus Christ. He is the one who healed you. He loves you, Queen Nana. He has loved you all along."
And in that moment, something melted inside the proud queen's heart. All her riches had never made her happy. All her idols had never healed her. But this gentle God of Nina's had reached down and made her well, and asked for nothing in return but her love.
"Then I will love Him," said Queen Nana. "Teach me, Nina. Teach me everything about your God. From this day on, Jesus Christ is my God, too!"
And Queen Nana, who had once been proud and unhappy, became a Christian — and she became gentle and kind and full of joy. She was baptized, and her empty heart was filled at last with the love of God.
Now, you would think the whole kingdom would rejoice. The queen was healed! The queen was happy! But there was one person in the palace who was not pleased at all.
It was the king. King Mirian.
King Mirian loved the old idols. He did not want anything to change. And when he saw how his wife had become a Christian — when he saw all the people of his city beginning to follow Nina and her God — he grew angry and afraid.
"This is getting out of hand," the king grumbled. "First the gardener, then the common people, and now even my own wife! This Nina and her teaching are spreading everywhere. It must be stopped."
The more he thought about it, the angrier King Mirian became. A dark thought grew in his mind — a cruel and terrible thought. He decided that he would put a stop to the Christians. He would punish anyone who followed Jesus. And in his hardest, angriest moment, he even thought: Yes — anyone who will not give up this new faith must be punished. Even Queen Nana herself, if she will not return to the old gods.
It was a wicked plan, and it had grown in the king's heart like a cold, dark shadow.
One day, King Mirian went out hunting in the forest.
It was a fine, bright day. The king rode out with his men, with his horses and his hounds, deep into the woods to chase the deer. And as he rode, the dark plan turned over and over in his angry mind.
The king rode deeper and deeper into the forest, chasing after the hunt, until — without quite noticing — he had ridden far away from all his men. He was all alone now, deep in the trees.
And then, suddenly, in the middle of the bright afternoon, something happened that had never happened before.
The sun went out.
I do not mean it set, the way the sun sets every evening. I mean that all at once, in the very middle of the day, the bright sunlight vanished — and a thick, terrible darkness fell over the whole forest.
It was darker than the darkest night. There were no stars. There was no moon. The king could not see his own hand in front of his face. He could not see the path. He could not see the trees. He could not see anything at all.
King Mirian's horse stamped and snorted in fear. The king's heart began to pound.
"Hello?" he called out. "Is anyone there? Where are my men?"
But no one answered. He was all alone, in a darkness blacker than anything he had ever known.
And now King Mirian was truly afraid — more afraid than he had ever been in his whole life.
In the terrible darkness, the king did the only thing he could think to do. He called out to his old idols — the gods of gold and stone that he had bowed to all his life.
"O great Armazi!" he cried. "O mighty gods! Help me! Bring back the light! Save me from this darkness!"
But there was no answer.
The darkness did not lift. The idols could not help him — they had never been able to help anyone. They could not even help themselves. The king called and called upon them, and nothing happened at all. The darkness only seemed to press in closer and heavier around him.
King Mirian's heart sank. He was lost and alone and afraid, in a darkness with no end. And his old gods were silent.
And then — there in the dark, with all his pride and all his anger melting away into fear — the king remembered something.
He remembered Nina.
He remembered the gentle young woman in the garden, and the God she prayed to. He remembered how that God had healed his wife when all the doctors and all the idols had failed. He remembered that Nina's God was a God who answered prayers — a living God, not a cold statue.
And from the very bottom of his frightened heart, King Mirian did something he had never done before. He prayed to the true God.
"O God of Nina!" he cried out into the darkness. "If You are truly the living God — if You are the One who healed my wife — then hear me now! Light up this darkness for me! Show me the way home! And if You do, I promise — I promise with all my heart — I will believe in You. I will worship You and no other. I will set up Your holy Cross. I will build You a church. And I will follow You all the days of my life!"
He held his breath in the darkness, and he waited.
And the moment King Mirian finished his prayer — the very moment — the darkness rolled away.
The light came rushing back. The sun blazed out, warm and golden and beautiful, pouring through the trees. The forest was bright again. The birds began to sing. The king could see the path, and the leaves, and the blue sky overhead.
King Mirian sat upon his horse in the warm sunshine, and he began to weep — but they were tears of wonder and gratitude. He understood now. The idols had been silent in his moment of need. But the God of Nina — the true and living God — had heard him at once and answered him.
"It is true," the king whispered. "It is all true. The God of Nina is the one true God. And I called on Him, and He saved me."
The king turned his horse and rode home as fast as he could go — but he was not the same man who had ridden out that morning. The angry, frightened, proud King Mirian was gone. In his place was a man whose heart had been made new.
When King Mirian came galloping back into the city, the people stared. He leaped from his horse and ran — not to his palace, not to his throne, but to the garden, to find Nina.
"Nina! Nina!" the king called. "Where is the woman who told us about the true God?"
When Nina came out from beneath her bramble bush, the king did an astonishing thing. He, the great king of all Georgia, knelt down before the humble young woman in her simple clothes.
"Nina," he said, "forgive me. I was angry. I was proud. I planned wicked things in my heart. But today, in the dark forest, I called upon your God, and He saved me. Now I know the truth. Jesus Christ is the one true God! Teach me, Nina. Teach me, and teach all my people. I want all of Georgia to know Him!"
Can you imagine how Nina's heart must have leaped for joy? She had prayed for this for so long. She had walked across the world for this. She had lived in a tent and prayed through cold nights for this very moment.
"Rise, O King," she said, her own eyes shining with tears. "Give thanks not to me, but to God, who has opened your eyes. He has been waiting for you all along."
And now everything changed in the land of Georgia.
The king and the queen both loved Jesus now. And when the king and queen love something, the whole kingdom follows. King Mirian kept every promise he had made in the dark forest.
First, he set up the holy Cross, just as he had promised. Then he began to build a church — a real church, the first great church in all of Georgia — so that the people would have a place to gather and pray to the true God.
There is a beautiful old story about the building of that first church. The builders cut a great wooden pillar from a cedar tree to hold up the roof. But when they tried to lift it into place, it would not move. It was too heavy. No matter how many strong men pushed and pulled, the pillar would not budge.
So Nina stayed in the place all night long, and she prayed. And in the morning — what do you think? The great pillar rose up, all on its own, shining with a wonderful light, and settled gently into its place, exactly where it belonged. Everyone who saw it was filled with awe, and they knew that God's hand was upon that holy place. For hundreds of years afterward, people came to that church to pray, and it became one of the most beloved holy places in all of Georgia.
And the people came — oh, how they came! From the city and from the countryside, from the mountains and the valleys, the people of Georgia came to be baptized. They left their cold idols behind forever. They learned to pray to the living God. They learned the story of Jesus — how He was born, and how He loved everyone, and how He died on the Cross and rose again on the third day. Children learned it from their mothers, just as Nina had learned it from her own mother long ago, in the faraway land of golden rocks.
The whole land of Georgia became a Christian land. And it has stayed a Christian land from that day to this — for more than one thousand seven hundred years.
All because one brave girl said yes to God, and walked a very long way, and never stopped loving and never stopped praying.
Nina lived a long life in the land she loved. She kept on teaching and praying and helping people, right to the very end. And when at last she was very old, and it was time for her to go home to the Lord she had served so faithfully, she lay down in a quiet village called Bodbe, in the green hills of Georgia.
The king and queen and all the people wept to lose her. They wanted to carry her body to the great church in the city and bury her with all honor. But the wagon that carried her would not move from the spot — for it was God's will that she should rest there, in the quiet place she loved. So they buried her there, and over her grave they built a church, and people come to pray there even today.
The Church gave Saint Nina a special and beautiful title. They call her "Equal to the Apostles." Do you know who the Apostles were? They were the very first followers of Jesus — the ones He sent out into all the world to tell everyone the Good News. Saint Nina did exactly the same thing. She carried the Good News to a whole nation that had never heard it. And so she is honored like one of the Apostles themselves.
Every year, on the fourteenth day of January, Christians all around the world remember Saint Nina. We remember the brave girl who loved Jesus. We remember the little cross of grapevines, bound with her own hair, that the Mother of God gave her in a dream. We remember her long, long journey, and her tent under the bramble bush, and the baby in the garden, and the healing of the queen, and the dark forest where the proud king finally found the light.
And when we remember Saint Nina, we remember something wonderful about ourselves, too.
We remember that you do not have to be big, or strong, or important, or grown up, to do something beautiful for God. Saint Nina was only a young girl when God called her. She had no army and no riches — only her love, and her prayers, and a little cross made of vines.
But with those small things, and with God's help, she changed a whole country forever.
And that is the end of the story of Saint Nina — the brave girl who carried the love of Jesus all the way to Georgia.
Holy Mother Nina, pray to God for us!
Saint Nina, Equal to the Apostles and Enlightener of Georgia, is commemorated each year on January 14th. Her grapevine cross remains a treasured holy relic in Georgia to this day, and the cross shaped from vines is still the special sign of the Georgian Church — a reminder of the gift the Mother of God placed into the hands of a brave young girl who was not afraid to say "yes" to God.