From Ira Kapitonova near Kyiv (Day 534):
O Lord of hosts, blessed is the one who trusts in you!
Psalm 84:12
My posts may seem too morbid lately, but I don’t know how to deal with this cruelty. On a personal level, our life is fine — we go about our business as usual, caring for the family, tending the garden, harvesting and canning the produce — but then you open the news, and in that very instance, the world is drained of color and filled with gloom.
Today, Russia launched missiles aimed at an airfield in the Ivano-Frankivsk region, trying to kill young pilots preparing to undergo training for piloting the F-16 aircraft (which may be supplied by our partners once we have trained staff). Instead, the missile hit a private household near the airfield. The house belonged to a family with three kids. The rocket killed their 8-year-old son.
I’ve never met that family, but it feels like their pain is palpable in my body.
It’s similar to the pain I felt yesterday when I read about two girls from Zaporizhzhia who were singing and fundraising for the Ukrainian Army and who were killed by the missile that hit the downtown area. There is a video that shows them performing in Zaporizhzhia streets less than an hour before the strike.
It’s also similar to the pain I felt when I read about a 66-year-old teacher taking a walk in Zaporizhzhia when a piece of shrapnel hit her in the back, being fatal.
And this list goes on and on. You try to contain this pain, but it’s more than anyone can handle. So you feel overwhelmed with gratitude for being able to bring this pain to the Lord and pour it out at His feet.
Jeremiah is often called the weeping prophet, but I guess I never fully understood his desire and need to weep for his people and his country until recently.
But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope:
The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”
Lamentations 3:21-24
Voice of Ukraine 
7 responses to “8/12/2023 – My posts may seem too morbid lately, but I don’t know how to deal with this cruelty… Jeremiah”
Oh, Ira! I’m sure I can’t comprehend your and the Ukrainian people’s pain as you live in the midst of the war. I am so far removed from the situation by miles, yet weep and grieve for you and your country. It must be very hard for you to write this news every day, especially when such horrific crimes happen. However, I am grateful for your honesty in sharing and letting us know what is going on.
When one part of the body hurts we all hurt. Thank you for letting us walk along side of you. Your trust in our Savior as you walk this path is a testimony of God’s grace to the rest of the world.
“Psalm 33:18-20 But the Lord watches over those who fear Him, those who rely on His unfailing love. He rescues them from death and keeps them alive in time of famine. We put our hope in the Lord, He is our help and our shield, in Him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in His holy name. Let your unfailing love surround us (the people of Ukraine) Lord, for our hope is in You alone.” NLT
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[…] August 12, 2023UncategorizedDr. Dean Albert Ramser 8/12/2023 – My posts may seem too morbid lately, but I don’t know how to deal with this … […]
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I am not near your pain, but I also mourn for the destruction in Ukraine–crying out the Lord for MERCY!
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💙💛
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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.
I sometimes feel appalled at the thought of the sum total of human misery all over the world at the present moment: the millions parted, fretting, wasting in unprofitable days – quite apart from torture, pain, death, bereavement, injustice. If anguish were visible, almost the whole of this benighted planet would be enveloped in a dense dark vapour, shrouded from the amazed vision of the heavens! And the products of it all will be mainly evil – historically considered. But the historical version is, of course, not the only one. All things and deeds have a value in themselves, apart from their ‘causes’ and ‘effects’. No man can estimate what is really happening at the present sub specie aeternitatis. 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. And you were so special a gift to me, in a time of sorrow and mental suffering, and your love, opening at once almost as soon as you were born, foretold to me, as it were in spoken words, that I am consoled ever by the certainty that there is no end to this. Probable under God that we shall meet again, ‘in hale and in unity’, before very long, dearest, and certain that we have some special bond to last beyond this life – subject of course always to the mystery of free will, by which either of us could throw away ‘salvation’. In which case God would arrange matters differently! …
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Bill Mauldin, on living in the army in WWII–
“No normal man who has smelled and associated with death ever wants to see any more of it. In fact, the only men who are even going to want to bloody noses in a fist fight after this war will be those who want people to think they were tough combat men when they weren’t. The surest way to become a pacifist is to join the infantry.
I don’t make the infantryman look noble, because he couldn’t look noble even if he tried. Still there is a certain nobility and dignity in combat soldiers and medical aid men with dirt in their ears. They are rough and their language gets coarse because they live a life stripped of convention and nicities. Their nobility and dignity comes from the way they live unselfishly and risk their lives to help others.”
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I share only a tiny bit of the pain every time I read, but I keep on and keep praying.
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