We pray for peace in Ukraine and anywhere else in the world it is needed
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This week I thought I’d be writing a column exploring the church season of Lent. How might we make time to consider life and faith?
Then Russia invaded Ukraine.
How do I write about anything else? Yet how do I write anything about it, in its enormity? How do I write anything relevant five days before publication?
Life has been interrupted. Obviously it has been interrupted most forcefully, with devastating consequences, for those in Ukraine who are under attack. Life has been interrupted for soldiers and civilians plunged into conflict without choice. Life has been interrupted for Russians facing arrest and worse to protest.
Life has been interrupted. People are forced to make desperate choices, with no idea what lies ahead.
Those interruptions ripple out from Ukraine. Other nations feel under threat, refugees need welcome, families fear for loved ones, armed forces stand by, and international diplomacy and sanctions are enacted.
Life has been interrupted. How should we respond?
Major interruptions happen in life more than many of us would like to admit.
Globally we are horrified of the Taliban taking over Afghanistan, Yemen being reduced to humanitarian catastrophe, conflict in Syria devastating lives, and more.
Interruptions also happen closer to home. Death or illness turn our world upside down. Loss of job or income, or increasing bills, brings fear and vulnerability.
So how do we live with hope for the future (which is what this column asks me to consider)?
That can bring us back to Lent, a season that encourages us to stop and think about life and faith - if we are privileged not to have such questions forced upon us by events.
What do we find when normal life is interrupted by questions of life and death? Where do we go with our hopes and our fears?
We can find resources within ourselves and our communities, because human beings are incredible.
We may also find hope with a higher power, with God, journeying through life and its interruptions with us.
In the Christian tradition, I believe the journey towards Easter shows God accompanying humans through everything. God chose, in Jesus, to live in an occupied country, challenging the powerful, welcoming the rejected, offering an alternative way to live and love. That led to Jesus’ execution by those in power.
So, I believe God is with us when life is interrupted by violence, pain, loss, grief, and fear. And the Easter hope I hang on to is that love can bring new possibilities for wounded people in our wounded world.
It’s not an easy hope for quick fixes or normality. But it is a hope that we face nothing alone, and that death and destruction don’t have the final word.
For those it helps, I offer a short and simple prayer:
God of life and love,
We pray for peace in Ukraine and everywhere it’s needed.
We pray for all who live with fear, loss and grief.
We pray for wisdom and compassion for those with power.
And we pray that in terrible times no-one would feel alone.
- Jenny Adams is Minister of Duffus, Spynie and Hopeman Church of Scotland.
