From Ira Kapitonova in Kyiv (Day 514):
Hear my voice, O God, in my complaint;
preserve my life from dread of the enemy.
Hide me from the secret plots of the wicked,
from the throng of evildoers.
Psalm 64:1-2
Day after day, my heart breaks for the cities attacked by the enemy. Zaporizhzhia is under attack right now.
Please, pray for Odesa, as this city has been under continuous attacks for a week. Tonight’s missile strike seems to have caused destruction and fire in a temple and residential buildings. Do they pose a threat to the Russian army?
During the war, when so many people die and suffer daily, you reevaluate many things. With all the destruction brought upon our land, I caught myself thinking that we often take our culture and historical landmarks for granted. They are part of our surroundings, so we are often unaware of their significance. However, this war has taken the lives of enough prominent people, it has robbed us of many cultural opportunities, and it keeps ruining our landmarks, so it leaves me with an urgency to learn and appreciate the amazing heritage we have been given. Learn about it to share with others and to preserve it for future generations so that those who intend genocide on our land do not succeed.
Let the righteous one rejoice in the Lord and take refuge in him! Let all the upright in heart exult!
Psalm 64:10
Voice of Ukraine 
3 responses to “7/23/2023 – Day after day, my heart breaks for the cities attacked by the enemy…”
Reblogged this on dean ramser.
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Psalm 33: 13 “The Lord looks from heaven; He sees all the sons of men.” Heavenly Father, You see what the enemy is doing to Ukraine–Bear Your mighty arm!
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J.R.R. Tolkien writes to his son, April 30 1944:
I do miss you so, and I find all this mighty hard to bear on my own account and on yours. The utter stupid waste of war, not only material but moral and spiritual, is so staggering to those who have to endure it. And always was (despite the poets), and always will be (despite the propagandists) – not of course that it has not is and will be necessary to face it in an evil world. But so short is human memory and so evanescent are its generations that in only about 30 years there will be few or no people with that direct experience which alone goes really to the heart. The burnt hand teaches most about fire.
..All we do know, and that to a large extent by direct experience, is that evil labours with vast power and perpetual success – in vain: preparing always only the soil for unexpected good to sprout in. So it is in general, and so it is in our own lives. … But there is still some hope that things may be better for us, even on the temporal plane, in the mercy of God. And though we need all our natural human courage and guts (the vast sum of human courage and endurance is stupendous, isn’t it?) and all our religious faith to face the evil that may befall us (as it befalls others, if God wills) still we may pray and hope. I do.
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