Friday Reflection - Losers 18-03-2022

Today, as I am looking at what's happening with Russia and the Ukraine, I am fearful. This is just so difficult for me to understand. Usually in my writing I can see many different points of view, but I have always struggled with the megalomaniacal perspective. For the life of me, I cannot understand what drives a man, who under no threat, extends the arm of violence to his neighbour and involves the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the process. When all is said and done, and the battlefield lies strewn with bodies and blood stains the ground - the survivors ask, "What has been accomplished?" Speaking with someone about Putin and his actions, they asked me, "has the bully won?" My response was "he wins with every Ukrainian life lost!"

So here we have moved from the disaster of a worldwide pandemic that crippled many economies to the brink of world war. Yet, while the world spoke of war, my family welcomed a new baby. What a juxtaposition of circumstances. On one hand lives devalued to their basest limit by a megalomaniacal dictator; willing to spend the lives of others for his own greed and ambition. On the other the peaceful, yet chaotic, birth of new life; and the attendant joy that comes with that birth. Given our history on this big blue sphere, we know that this exact scene has played out hundreds of thousands of times before; yet still as I sit here and reflect on this experience, I cannot help but be hopeful. In the midst of that hope, I also find a sense of gratitude – there is a Bible verse that goes “…weeping may last for the night, but a shout of joy comes with the morning” and that speaks of hope for me.