From:Ira Kapitonova (Day 656):
When I am afraid, I put my trust in you.
In God, whose word I praise, in God I trust;
I shall not be afraid. What can flesh do to me?
Psalm 56:3-4
At 4 am, we woke up from explosions that came before the sirens went off. We quickly unrolled the mattress in the hallway, brought our son there, and tried to find a comfortable position on a beanbag to fall back asleep. We weren’t as scared as we were annoyed that our sleep was interrupted.
This morning, Russia attacked Kyiv with eight ballistic missiles. Thankfully, all of them were intercepted. The fallen debris did cause some destruction and left giant craters, but we were very pragmatic in our assessment — at least the missiles didn’t reach their targets, and there were no casualties. A few stolen hours of sleep are not that big of a loss.
I guess the worst part for me came once we came to school, and I heard the students sharing their feelings before the classes: “I saw the debris falling.” — “I woke up from the explosions.” — “I couldn’t understand why my parents woke me up in the middle of the night.” — “I thought I wouldn’t live till morning.”
Lord, establish your justice and bring Your judgment on those who cause this suffering to your little ones.
You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book? (Psalm 56:8)
Voice of Ukraine 
2 responses to “12/12/2023 – Lord, establish your justice and bring Your judgment on those who cause this suffering to your little ones. ”
A year ago:
12/13/2022 – Belgorod Dnestrovsky: When there is no electricity, remember that we have light in us
From Lyuda (Day 293): Dear brothers and sisters, We had a good day yesterday. There were some alarms at night but nothing happened. Praise the Lord! And we had electricity all day yesterday.
I was glad to have a call from Vika, our counselor from Odessa. They have electricity several hours during the day. Vika was glad to be able to cook for soup kitchen on Saturday. They have people who come regularly now and some new people and they do street evangelism. It’s a special day for Vika, she loves her ministry in soup kitchen.
Besides counseling, Vika teaches at Christian university. Now her students are scattered all over the world – Baltic countries, Poland, Romania, Germany, Austria. But they all come for online classes. Some of the students work and come to the class during the work, they warn Vika that they will be able to listen to her class but they won’t be able to respond. At the beginning of her class Vika asks when it’s a good time to demonstrate the materials she wants to show them on the screen and they decide when they all can take time and look at the materials.
In spite of all this turmoil the lectures were going smooth and last Monday Vika finished her course and the last lecture ended at 1.30 p.m. and at 2 p.m. a massive attack began. Main electric units were destroyed and all city was left without electricity. The pumps that supplied water to the city could not work and there was no water and no heating. It was depressing but Vika was very glad that she finished her course and taught all her lectures before the blackout.
At home they had some supply of technical water and they bought the bottles with drinking water in the store. When their phones discharged they used power banks and then went to the nearest cafes to charge them there from generators.
The bakeries in the city did not work and Vika was afraid she would not be able to buy bread for soup kitchen but on the way there she stopped by the bakery and there were three last loaves waiting for her. She was very happy.
I was glad to talk to Vika. They have heating and water now and I hope that we all will cope with electric outages. There is a saying which everybody repeats to encourage each other “ When there is no electricity, remember that we have light in us”. Yes, we should be the light to the world in any situation.
Love in Christ,
Lyuda
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12/9/2023 – ADVENT Seven main reasons why Christmas matters.
From: Sergei Nakul (pastor of Big City Church in Kyiv and military chaplain)
1) Christmas shows that creation, the material world, by itself, is not sinful. Matter is not vicious and sinful. God, by becoming a real man, strikes a devastating blow on gnosticism, which sees the material world as something bad, vicious in its essence, and unpleasant to God. If that was the case, would God become defile by material flesh? Therefore Christianity, emphasizing this fact, struggled with gnostic heresies that claimed Jesus only had a visible, illusory body.
2) Christmas shows that God is not alienated and not far from creation. God, being man, brought Himself closer to creation. In the birth of the Son, in the God, the Creator meets face-to-face with creation. Yes, God is indescribably great, exalted, unfathomable and omnipotent (transcendent), yet at the same time close to us in his incarnation (immanent). The Creator did not leave creation, but came to him, entered to him in the body, and speaks to him the language of incarnation.
3) Christmas shows that the incarnation of God’s love is not an abstract expression, but literal. A love personified. Out of the excess of the heart the mouth speaks. God expressed His excess heart with the Word. And that word is Jesus! At Christmas, he showed us the heart of God. Christmas shows that the Creator loves his creation and desires to renew it by creating a new creation in Christ Jesus. This restoration encompasses the entire world building. It is not limited to the salvation of individually taken human souls and sending them to heaven, neglecting in study or practice the significance of the salvation of man in all fullness of soul and body.
4) Christmas showed us in Jesus true humanity, the true, whole image of God in all the glory of his purpose. Jesus is the mirror in which the broken mirrors of mankind can see the Father. He is the one who collects the fragments of the destroyed image of God in man and restores it.
5) Christmas shows that God is faithful to His promises. That which He prophesied through the prophets, He fulfilled at the birth of Jesus.
6) Without Christmas, there would be no perfect human life of Jesus in perfect obedience to the Father, no real suffering and death on the cross, no real burial of the body, and no real, literal bodily resurrection from dead bodies. In that case, there is no salvation, no confidence, and no hope. Christmas without the cross and resurrection is meaningless, cross and resurrection without Christmas are impossible. The Son of God is born as a man, truly literally, of flesh and blood of the body, with all physiological functions. In everything this child was like a man except sin. Only in the real, not the primary, illusory human body will He be able to save man in all completeness. There was no real, supernatural bodily birth of the Messiah, there was no then His real life in “our skin”, real death on the cross, there was no reality of the burial, and there was no reality in literal bodily resurrection. Then there is no hope for the resurrection of our bodies, but our salvation is illusory.
Because the purpose of Christmas can only be fulfilled by God who became a man. And this purpose is “He will save his people from their sins”
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