During a World Council of Churches morning prayer—focusing on the churches and people of Belarus, Moldova, Russia, and Ukraine – a reflection by Prof. Dr Dmytro Tsolin focused on both the pain of the war in Ukraine as well as how we hang onto hope.
Tsolin, pastor of the German Evangelical Lutheran Church of Ukraine and professor at the Department of Biblical Studies of the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv, asked the question: “Has the promised Kingdom not come yet?”
He noted that we live in a world that still follows the laws of sin. “Often, we feel our depressing helplessness from the fact that we cannot fundamentally change anything,” he said. “The kingdom of Christ, which lives through faith in Christ in our hearts, only increases this pain, because we feel the contrast between sin and holiness more acutely than the rest of people.”
He further noted that we acutely feel this pain now, during the war in Ukraine. “We feel pain from the daily deaths of our compatriots, from the unceasing artillery and rocket shelling of our cities and villages by the Russian army,” he said. “We cannot stop it.”
He added: “We feel pain because of the brutal and reasonless aggression against our country from the side of Russia. We pray but we cannot change the cruel reality of this world.”
But the Lord is acting now, said Tsolin. “He hears our prayers and answers them, although sometimes it seems to us that He is silent,” he said. “What should we do now? We invoke the name of Jesus Christ in our lives and experience the presence of His Kingdom right now, in us, among us and around us.”
We see that God is still working, he concluded. “His name and His power are with us now, and we believe that the Day will come when the Kingdom of God will be revealed in all its glory.”
Reflection on Acts 4:5-12 by Prof. Dr Dmytro Tsolin, the German Evangelical Lutheran Church of Ukraine
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