From: Ira Kapitonova in Kyiv (Day 1258)
The righteous will rejoice when he sees the vengeance;
he will bathe his feet in the blood of the wicked.
Mankind will say, “Surely there is a reward for the righteous;
surely there is a God who judges on earth.”
Psalm 58:10-11
I’ve noticed that I usually have several days without posting here after every massive attack with a lot of damage and casualties. Any news seems insignificant. All words seem empty. Any plans feel futile.
When I opened Psalm 58 tonight, I was surprised by the final verses I quoted here. They seem to echo the longing for vengeance that I have in my heart. There are moments when I wish I could fly like a bird and fight the drones in the skies. Or I wish I could turn into a shield over my country and my loved ones. Or I feel like I could go into the battle with my bare hands and fight this wickedness. I have heard some people say that we as Christians should not have these feelings, but I believe that we as Christians have no excuse to remain idle in the face of this evil. We need to fight it with every effort we can muster to stop it from spreading and destroying more lives.
Our school year will start in three weeks. I don’t know what it will look like, but as I am already planning and preparing, I keep my ultimate goal in mind — to help our children grow up into people who choose the right thing no matter the cost, who are ready to give up their comfort for the sake of saving others, who are not afraid to be honest and look for ways to serve others. This would be my reward as I await the Lord’s vengeance.
Voice of Ukraine 
2 responses to “8/5/2025 — The righteous will rejoice when he sees the vengeance; he will bathe his feet in the blood of the wicked.”
J.R.R. Tolkien to his son Christopher
30 April 1944
My dearest:
I have decided to send you another air letter, not an airgraph, in the hope that I may so cheer you up a little more. … 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.
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.
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Romans 8:38-39
“For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” — Saint Paul, who lived through beatings, shipwreck, false brethren, a stoning that left him for dead, constant travel, long imprisonment under false charges, and “every day, my concern for all the churches”
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