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11/5/2023 – How easy it is to blur the lines between necessity and privilege!

Today’s picture — the evacuation train that brought people out of the city of Irpin (swarmed with Russian soldiers) in the early days of the invasion. It was shelled during one of its trips, yet it wasn’t stopped. The train car is on display now for the Ukrainian Railway Workers’ Day. The photo was posted by the Ukrainian Railway Company Ukrzaliznytsia.

From Ira Kapitonova in Kyiv (Day 619):

The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever;
the rules of the Lord are true,
and righteous altogether.
Psalm‬ ‭19:9‬ ‭

We had a slow family morning, enjoying every minute of Saturday. Just as we were ready to leave home for errands, the sirens went off. All of the territory of Ukraine was under the threat of ballistic missiles. We postponed our plans and settled on our hallway floor. The air raid warning lasted for over two hours. Even though we felt rather cozy and enjoyed each other’s company, it was easy to get restless and start complaining about the floor being too hard, the air raid lasting too long, or our plans being messed up.

However, when I started grumbling, I immediately felt convicted in my heart. In my selfishness, I took our safety for granted. What felt like an inconvenience to me can be a dream of people living close to the frontline, residents of Kherson or Nikopol district, Kharkiv or Sumy region, and all those surviving in the active combat zone. How easy it is to blur the lines between necessity and privilege! Every day we can spend in our home with our loved ones in relative safety is a privilege bought at a high price someone else is ready to pay. The least we can do is not take it for granted.

Dal Stanton

One response to “11/5/2023 – How easy it is to blur the lines between necessity and privilege!”

  1. From: Sergei Nakul (pastor of Big City Presbyterian Church in Kyiv and military chaplain): A great patch with the text from Psalm 25. Again, I remind you that the Psalms is not just a collection of religious poetry of the distant past, but the living and díêve God’s word. At least I’m 100% sure of this. Therefore, read the psalms, keep them in your heart, pray them, sing them, encourage one another with psalms, comfort them with psalms, thank God with psalms, and most importantly, implement the psalms in your life here and now. After all, the Psalms are the Word of Christ, which must richly fill us so that Christ may be incarnated through us in the present of our being and space!

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