ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHING
February 26, 2022
In the last year or so, I have really found myself in a healthier place when it comes to watching or reading the news. First, my watching had dropped by 80%. Second, I am very focused on broad, less commentary based news – lengthy news stories where it feels as if I actually learned something. That’s all to say that in the last four days or so, I am back to my old ways. The things happening in Ukraine are consuming me, and I recognize how much of that emotion emerges from a feeling of helplessness. A couple of days ago, I listened to a beautiful, yet painful story on NPR about a family in Ukraine living in unspeakable tension. The mother fearful after learning she was on a Russian hit list because she serves in the Ukraine Parliament. All the while, trying to be a mother to a daughter who was worried about her new guinea pig. How do you move between those two worlds? I can’t imagine trying to maintain some level of normalcy while the threat of death marches closer each day. In Psalm 27, the author write: “Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war rise up against me, yet I will be confident.” Don’t tell me the author was completely without fear. Don’t try to suggest 100% confidence as war approached. The Psalms were not written in some secure ivory tower, but in the homes of those who were facing the threat of death; people on the street uncertain of their future; families trying to make sense of the ludicrous. Life has a lot of stress just being life, but an unprovoked attack by an unstable thug suddenly has human life being reduced to a statistic and the concerns of children being lost in the dust of another deadly explosion. The absolute insanity of this moment needs to be remembered for what it is – evil wielding it power over the insecurity and instability of a man who is nothing more than a playground bully with a title and an army.
Where do we even begin, O Holy One? What do we say? How shall we participate in the transformation of the world when everything that opposes you has a propaganda machine and thousands of tanks? Let our love find its footing in faith, always looking for tangible ways of taking up the cross. May peace be spoken on the streets and lived in the actions of all those who see in Jesus a radically different way of living in this world. Amen.
