I Just Don’t Get It – Ukraine
Well, everyone probably knows by now that Russia has invaded Ukraine. And as I write those words, I am speechless.
I cannot fathom what the Ukrainian people are feeling. I cannot begin to understand how their world has quickly been turned upside down.
How one day they are living their lives in a peaceful country, going to work, getting an education, raising their kids, paying their taxes.
And then suddenly. It changes.
It saddened me to see the mass exodus from Ukraine to neighboring countries. People carrying suitcases not as tourists, but refugees. Those suitcases don’t just hold a week’s worth of clothes for sightseeing or dinners out, but their entire history and identity.
A lifetime of belongings shrunk down to bare essentials.
Children holding stuffed animals and their parents hand in train stations. Adults crying and calling home to see if their parents who didn’t want to escape are still alive. People who once called themselves citizens of their homeland are now questioning, where is home now?
As I was driving to work this morning the news images replayed in my mind. Those images that seem a world away, but to the Ukrainians, they probably would have thought the same thing a few months ago.
If I was in their spot, if my native land was being invaded, what would I do?
Would I stay and fight? Would my lack of military experience scare the soldiers? Would my Hyundai Santa Fe SUV cause their tanks to quiver? Would my butcher knife and baseball bat arouse concern from their missiles and bombs?
Would I hide? Would I escape into the woods or up into my attic? Carry some rations of food and water and hope to wait out the ambush for a peace treaty.
Would I flee? Would I leave everything I call mine and leave it like was a donation at a thrift store? My house. My furniture. My photographs and heirlooms. Would I walk away with only a suitcase in hand?
My heart sunk at the visualization of being in their predicament. Because that fear, uncertainty, shakiness is crippling.
That feeling of having the rug swept from under you is debilitating. That disillusionment that this chaos isn’t really happening and the nightmare will end soon is heartbreaking. The realization that it isn’t a dream is paralyzing.
But as I was driving I felt a wave of peace as if God was speaking.
Even though you may lose your job, you won’t lose Me.
Even though you may escape your country, you won’t escape Me.
Even though you may walk away empty handed, you won’t walk away from Me.
Even though you may have abandoned your home, you won’t abandon Me.
Even though you may hide from the enemy, you won’t hide from Me.
Even though you feel this is the end, you will be with Me until the end and then after.
“Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer’s; he makes me tread on my high places. To the choirmaster: with stringed instruments.”
Habakkuk 3:17, 19 ESV
https://bible.com/bible/59/hab.3.17-19.ESV
Even though…
Peace and prayers for you, Ukraine 
