Evidence of God's Love

I have nothing new to add to what anyone else is saying. Like most of my friends, I watch the headlines, scroll past pictures in my newsfeed, and just don't know what to do besides pray. I'v never been to Ukraine, but I have people there whom I love. Several of her children have passed through my classroom or fallen asleep in my arms as I babysat. When I tell the story of seeing the Northern Lights from an airplane over the Atlantic, I usually tell them how the two Ukrainian kids in the seat next to me followed me to the galley window while their parents slept - I had to lift up the little girl to help her see - and despite our language barrier, we enjoyed that most beautiful phenomenon together. 

Then there are all the people whom I love in Russia. Several of her children have also passed through my classroom, laughed with me sipping tea on my couch, patiently taught me the Cyrillic alphabet before I moved to Kazakhstan, and generally helped me appreciate the beauty to be found in that massive country. As a 10-year-old girl, I remember staring up at the colorful walls of the Winter Palace and belting out Anastasia songs as we crossed the Neva river. If it hadn't been for Covid, I would've gotten to revisit those museums with a new appreciation in the Spring of 2020, and now I wonder if I ever will.

I'm angry and grieved and disheartened and struggling to find my own stance. The Ukrainian people deserve to be the deciders of their own government and freedoms. Scripture is clear that you cannot walk all over victims because he will fight on their behalf. Yet, I also know what it's like to love the aggressor. Growing up in a country whose heritage was not only being on the losing side of both world wars, but also to be the birthplace of both men who started them, I wrestled with the question of why God would ever want to extend salvation to an Austrian. It was through my own deep-rooted passion for the people that God convinced me he still had love for these people. So, even though I hurt, I stand convinced that He loves Ukrainians and Russians because he has put a love for both into believers everywhere. May my own love grow.

"The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater" - J.R.R. Tolkien

a gift from a Ukrainian colleague

In the Light

 

I walked into the room and had to laugh. There, on the table, were my tulips - which I had just arranged that morning and fluffed to look full and bouquet-like - all leaning hard to the left where the sun was pouring in the window. They looked like they were simply starved for the light. Which is probably not that surprising in the winter months of north-west Europe. Their colors also shone all the more luminously and stunning, with their yellow and orange hues, the petals almost transparent.

The High School Play opens in 2 days, and I’m in love (yet again) with the cast, the crew, and the overall production. From my “perch” backstage I get to prepare the various props, pin flowers to lapels, and give encouraging fist bumps before reminding students to remove their masks and sweep out onto the stage with volume. Then I peer through the flats and smile as the characters from the script grow transparent, and the students I love shine luminously and stunning, complete with their grayed hair, self-grown mustaches, and cucumber sandwiches. 

And then I wonder what I look like in the light. My Bible study is deep into 1 John right now, and these verses from Week 1 are still rattling in my mind: "God is light. ... If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we are living in the light, as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin" (1 John 1: 5b, 7). I don't want to be a liar, comfortable with my facade, because if I live like that, I will continually avoid the light for fear of being exposed. I want to be like my flowers, transparent for the true light to shine through me! I guess that is only possible if I remove my mask of outward behavior and keep leaning into and craving the true light.