A bolt of thunder shatters the silence of the afternoon. It sounds chillingly like a bomb.
A shower of rain and more lightning ensues here, but miles and miles away, the thunder of bombs are sinister and eerie. There is not a single accompanying drop of rain.
War triggered by Russia against 44 million people in Ukraine was unimaginable, but unlike a bad nightmare, there is no chance of waking up from this. It has become reality. Hellish reality that ordinary Ukrainians are living through hour after hour.
The horrors of war have ensued. We can only imagine the death and destruction on both sides where fighting is heaviest, but we can see the anguished faces of those escaping, those staying, those who are choosing to walk the last 30km to become refugees in another country. Children with cancer huddled in the basement of a hospital when there are air strikes, normal civilian Ukrainians in puffy jackets trying to climb onto and stop with their bare hands, a moving Russian car that drives into their city. Anguish at every turn.
Social media is rife with postings expressing solidarity with Ukraine, support for their leaders, prayers for their people. But all the while there is a pervasive sense of helplessness that we are powerless to make it all stop. How has it come to this? The reasons are complex and varied, almost impossible to unwind.
What remains is a depressing sense of personal culpability, that we have stood and watched whilst things got worse, that we and our political leaders were none the wiser, that we urged no action, that they chose to look the other way every time aggression occured because it was too far away, and any action seemed beyond us.
Even now, rhetoric abounds. What use a state of union address or the EU rising with a standing ovation when a 60km long convey of tanks advances to decimate a capital city that has banks, libraries, supermarkets but is no bolstered military stronghold?
Yes, what evil men mean for harm, God can purpose for good. Right now all seems utterly bleak, but we can only trust in the sovereign goodness of an omniscient and omnipotent God. There is no glimmer of light, yet may there be a great turning towards Him who can save for eternity. They may kill the body, but He saves the soul, and lifts it to a place where bombs and tanks and missiles can never reach. That is our only sure hope in this dismal, dark, devastated world.
#PrayforUkraine
‘Do you rulers indeed speak justly? Do you judge people with equity? No, in your heart you devise injustice, and your hands mete out violence on the earth. Break the teeth in their mouths, O God; Lord , tear out the fangs of those lions! Let them vanish like water that flows away; when they draw the bow, let their arrows fall short. ‘
Psalm 58:1-2,6-7
[And on this earth, a stark wake-up call and a reminder that what we cannot defend, we indeed do not truly own.]
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