Unite ?

In light of the heartbreak and terror happening in the Ukraine, I’ve paused to imagine what it’d be like to live in the middle of a full-on WAR. To watch an army come to take away our land, possessions and/or my life. I imagined my neighbor’s house exploding. I imagined watching friends die and families torn apart. The survivor’s sorrows will be with them for the rest of their lives.  We’ve been fortunate not to experience the brutality of that kind of war on our own soil.

But sorrow and mourning come in many forms. It can unite us. We all experience it in one way or another. I just learned of a classmate who lost her two sisters and her brother all within two months. That pain and sense of loss can be, often is, overwhelming. It can break us.

Watching images of Ukrainians attempting to fight back as their cities disintegrate around them, had me longing for wisdom; words of comfort for us and for them. I opened the 2,000 year-old book of Psalms and read this: 

“But you, God, see the trouble of the afflicted;

You consider their grief and take it in hand. 

The victims commit themselves to you; 

you are the helper of the fatherless.“ (10:14) 

What does it look like when “victims commit themselves to God”?

I saw photos of churches packed tight and overflowing, shoulder to shoulder in crowded streets. People praying and mourning together. Helping / loving our neighbors can be the best way to fight the vortex of deep, debilitating personal grief.

 If you are spurred to action, there are many relief organizations that accept donations to help refugees from the Ukraine. Check out: lovedoes.org/ukraine. This group connects donations to over a million refugees who have fled to Poland, a country that has welcomed refugees. The people of Poland are sharing their homes as they remember Hitler’s horrific Nazi invasion of their own country during WWII. Besides helping the refugees, pastors from the LIFE Church are also involved in supporting women and children who remain in the Ukraine.