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| The main square in Kiev, between the police and protesters ~ Feb. 20, 2014 |
The pressure in my heart for the trials and aches of the
creation is so overwhelming today. If I take even a minute to quiet myself
tears well up in my eyes and freely flow. I feel the turmoil and tension in the
people around me and hear the desperate cries of those in far off lands for
justice and truth to prevail. Can a nation be born in a day? Today I believe
that it can. Can nations be recreated in a day? In the case of Ukraine,
perhaps, but this labour has lasted longer than a day and appears to have not
reached its appointed delivery.
For me, this is the first time that I have identified so
closely with a people and nation that is going through a revolution and my
heart is breaking at the realization of the destruction and loss of life that
corruption and greed has fed to the appetites of control and power. Knowing the
good-hearted, hard working, simple folks who comprise this people and their
desperate hope for a future that boasts change from the past, I can’t stop the
anger that rises up inside of me when think about the lack of freedom to
demonstrate and express their hopes in public space. Certainly, there are wrongs and error on both
sides of the battle, yet our focus must remain the heart of the nation, which
are the people themselves.
There is a painful joy in the reality of these happenings,
for it reflects the soul and will of a nation to declare its identity, and
vision for the future. The voice of Ukraine is being heard in the heavens and
on the earth. It is a groaning that longs for more than economic prosperity,
but whose true desire is for the righteousness and justice of the Heavenly
Kingdom on earth that brings lasting transformation, of which economic and
political health weighs a fraction of the success that is to come in its establishing.
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| Protests in Kiev, Ukraine at the beginning of "Euromaidan" |
I am certain that God has heard and is answering their
cries, but my sense is that the cries will only increase in volume and mass. God
is responding, and what will the nations do in response? The true face of the
national leadership has been revealed through the measures it has taken to
oppress and cut down the freedom to speak and demonstrate against its
conditioned grain. Leaders are speaking out against the actions of those “at
the head”, but what action will be taken that does not also punish the
Ukrainian people? We are left to watch and wait with anticipation for
courageous international leaders to also stand in true justice and
righteousness. The death toll rises as
people stand in peaceful protest and are shot down by police, and as others act
out of rebellion and provoke attack and mortal reproof.
Yet in the midst of it all, there stands a nation, a people,
with hope for change burning in their hearts. With the dream of being a country
liberated from the oppression of corruption, greed and power-hungry control. In
a land where the only hope for the future was to cross the border and get “out”,
there is a glimmer of change and a restoration of the dream of God that was
buried under decades of brutality, famine, murder, and war; all of which that
have remained dormant and covered by circumstance, but in this time the layers
of bitter soil are being tossed into the ditch and a trench of hope is being
dug so that the age old wounds might be healed and this nation, Ukraine, can be
born again into her God-ordained identity.
Let us watch and pray with hope and joy in believing for her
day of true delivery.
