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– On rejecting peace and rejecting the conditions of peace… –
3–4 minutes607 words#BeingHuman? On rejecting peace and rejecting the conditions of peace… I want to try to explain it because, on my recent trips to the US since late June, I was “challenged” by some American Christians who said that Ukraine rejects peace… That is what I tried to communicate to them, as politely as possible… When we (the state, the society, and the Church) in Ukraine say no to a proposed…
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– Who Pays for a Romantic Peace? –
5–7 minutes1,179 words#BeingHuman? Reflections on a sleepless night with sirens blaring from yet another massive ruzzian shelling… I owe you an explanation of a term I keep using, one I provided once above, and I feel I should repeat it here again. By “Romantic peacemakers,” I mean people who love peace as an idea more than they love the people who will have to live under its terms, and most of them…
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– Long Enough… Reading Psalm 13 through Ukrainian eyes… –
12–18 minutes2,876 wordsOn October 23, 2026, I spoke in Chicago at a Week of Compassion gathering (the relief, refugee, and development mission fund of the Christian Church [Disciples of Christ]) held at the Disciples Divinity House. I am grateful to Vy Nguyen for arranging the meeting, to Daan Verbaan of Kerk in Actie for our collaboration, and to Marjana Kashchak of the Ukrainian Educational Platform, who shared the evening stage with me.…
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Про екзистенційну ніч і три хліби, яких у мене немає…
14–21 minutes3,314 wordsМоя сьогоднішня проповідь на Лк. 11:5–8 у церкві «Скеля». Я так довго не був у нашій церкві через численні поїздки, що вже думав, чи мене часом не виключили. Називаю це самовільним залишенням церкви на певний час, а отже, і самовільним поверненням. Хочу продовжити з вами вивчення притч Ісуса в Євангелії від Луки, і цього разу це притча про товариша, який спить. Точніше, про того, хто вже ліг спати. Поряд із…
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Morning existential reflections and confession…
6–10 minutes1,500 words[in English] #BeingHuman. Morning existential reflections and confession… My daughter Tetyana came from Washington, D.C., to visit our family in Ukraine, and brought our first grandson, Wesley to meet the local family members. This morning the two of them walked the Alley of Heroes in the center of our city, past so many hundreds of portraits of fallen defenders. Wesley was looking at the portrait of Andriy, my younger brother…
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– Love Your Enemies? (Part 1) –
10–15 minutes2,363 words#BeingHuman. “Love your enemies”? [Part 1] … No verse of Scripture is quoted to Ukrainian Christians more often by well-meaning believers abroad and by Russian-speaking Slavic communities than the command of Jesus: “But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you” (Matthew 5:44, NKJV). It arrives in our…
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Sunday Sermon on Luke 16:19-31
16–23 minutes3,676 words#BeingHuman. The chasm we dig for ourselves, and a distance that cannot be measured in steps. My sermon today at Skelya Church in Rivne, for those interested in what we preach during this war. People sometimes ask what is left to preach when the sirens and the explosions do not stop. We do not preach a softer Gospel here, nor a louder one. We open the same Scriptures we always…
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A New Lesson, a Little Inconvenient, On Christian Leadership and the Shape of Partnership in Wartime…
8–13 minutes2,001 words#BeingHuman. A new lesson, and a slightly inconvenient one: on Christian leadership and the shape of partnership in wartime. When we speak about seminaries, local churches and church unions in Ukraine today, we reach almost by reflex for the language of structural change. It is a large part of what we do through the Vital Sustainability Initiative, and the word at the heart of that name, sustainability, is the quiet…
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On the Great Benefits Of Ukrainian Christians Being Silent…
4–5 minutes829 wordsIf only Ukrainians were silent, what a joy the ministry of reconciliation would be. A russian seminary professor could lecture on it inside a Ukrainian seminary, untroubled by any victim in the room, and publish his paper on forgiveness in Theological Reflections. And because nobody would interrupt him, no Ukrainian student would ever put to him the single question the whole subject turns on: who, exactly, is to forgive whom.…
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Seventy a day… A Place Where Someone Stays
3–5 minutes773 words#BeingHuman. Dear friends, greetings from Lviv. Roman, Oleksandr and I are deep in the work now, going through the chapters with the authors. It is humbling to edit a book on pastoral ministry during a war while that war is still being fought around the very people writing it. Some of our authors serve in the army, and a few are writing from the front line itself, sending paragraphs between…
BEING HUMAN
Contemplating the Divine and Earthly through Human Eyes • Споглядання Божественного і земного очима людини
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