Sunday, March 20, 2022

Dear God,

How can I put on paper what I saw this afternoon at the Lenten Concert:  Songs of Loss and Life? How can I fully explain what flowed from your spirit into my mind?  

For weeks ever since the Russians rolled into Ukraine with the sole intent of taking control of the sovereign nation, I have had a deep ache in my soul.  I have prayed and prayed.  Images of death and destruction have been plentiful ever deepening the terror, pain and suffering of the Ukranian people.  I ask what I can do to help the people, some perhaps I met on a visit to Kyiv in 1988.  

Almost from the beginning of the Introit and Kyrie, tears formed in my eyes.  All I could see were frightened people, mothers with their children, young professionals taking up arms for the first time to save their country, elderly people asking where they should go to be safe, wounded soldiers bleeding without benefit of hospital care and dead bodies in the streets.  As the musicians sang and played their instruments, I just let my tears flow.  I realized I was joining them with my tears, something they will never know, such a teeny, small thing, yet something I could do. 

About halfway through the concert, the scene in my mind changed.  Suddenly I saw a man in white robes appearing in the Ukranian streets, leaning down, perhaps whispering and helping each one rise up.  While the dead rose whole in person, Jesus' robe took on the blood of the departed.  One by one, the unclaimed became the claimed by the only One who could.  My tears changed from sadness to joy.

O Lord, you are always at work in the midst of chaos, conflict and tragedy.  You are always among the sick and dying.  You are in dirty, destroyed streets murmuring sweet, life-giving words to your people.  You take on our suffering and pain.  You even take on our wounds, all because we are your children.  Please, God, fill your hurting children with such scenes giving them hope, strength, love, courage and peace.

Loving God,

thank you

for your

great mercy.

Thank you

for faith

that makes

hope in 

despair happen.

Be ever

so close

to your

wounded, suffering people.

Love, Andrea