A Week of Realities

Monday night I was talking with Piotr who told me that his father was a pastor during communism in Western Ukraine. He talked about having to meet in several locations and when the police came and arrested his dad. As I listened, I was sickened by the reality that this was real life. It wasn't the game that someone in the US created to help teens understand the underground church, but that I know people who have lived this. Understandably, the game helps us associate tangibly with struggles of others, but it sickens me now to think of how we almost make fun of finding out who is 'KGB' and who can be trusted and who cannot. It is not a game. It is real life to believers all over the world. It is life, not a game.

The second harsh reality was when we took Operation Christmas Child gifts into the Chernobyl region. We visited two schools with a total of around 250 students. There is still a 'dead' zone where the roads are closed and the cities/villages are completely empty. Buildings have caved in roofs, all of the belongings are gone -- it is like something that you see in movies, not in real life. While we did not travel into the dead zone, we were in a village approximately 10 kilometers from the dead zone.

It reminded me of my first visits to Ukraine. Cold and dark rooms. Students that did not know that the Bible is a book filled with stories about God. Kids who had never heard the song Jesus loves me.

When I prayed for dinner last night, I told God that I didn't have words. I didn't know what to pray for except that He would protect them from the daily hazards that they live with and that He would touch their little lives with His grace. That somehow He would continually give them interaction with people that would serve as His hands and feet to show them how much He loves them.