BEING HUMAN

Day 4, 4 December 2024, the 1015th day of the full-scale war.

As war reshapes our geography of holiness, we are forced to reconsider the nature of divine presence. While missiles and kamikaze drones play their deadly lottery overhead by day and by night, a haunting question surfaces: can holiness dwell among rubble and ruins, in trenches and dugouts? As we count the seconds between explosions, does the Holy Spirit still whisper to us in such desperate places?

“And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn” (Luke 2:7, NKJV).

The answer lies in the paradox of Bethlehem, which echoes through our own war-torn reality. The birth of Jesus was more than a humble beginning, since it was God’s radical statement about divine presence in dangerous times. Like Ukrainian women giving birth in basement shelters, Mary delivered her child in a makeshift refuge. The King of the galaxies entered humanity through its back door, with no royal fanfare, only stable shadows and the breath of animals, much as we now find holiness in bathrooms and basements.

Consider the irony that speaks to our moment. The Architect of the universe chose a barn rather than a palace for His earthly debut, just as His presence now fills our bombed-out buildings and the dugouts our defenders hastily cut into the ground. This was neither poverty tourism nor divine miscalculation, but God’s signature move, repeated across our broken landscapes. The cosmic King who made His first bed in an animals’ feeding trough now rests in our makeshift shelters, and that crude manger blazed with more glory than Solomon’s temple, just as our simple sanctuaries behind two walls shine with His presence.

Between air-raid sirens that echo Herod’s threats and blasts that mirror Rome’s oppression, we are learning to see differently. These bathrooms and basements, these trenches and dugouts, serve for more than survival, since they are modern mangers. Like the shepherds who found God in a feeding trough, we discover His presence in the least likely sanctuaries a war can offer.

This divine kenosis, this deliberate self-emptying, reveals a God intimately acquainted with displacement and danger. The manger becomes a theological cipher for our times, decoding God’s preference for the spaces where people are most vulnerable. Through meals shared under shelling that echo the first Christmas feast, through steadfast presence in underground sanctuaries that mirror the solidarity of the stable, we take part in an incarnation that is still going on, and every act of love amid destruction becomes another Ukrainian manger, cradling the presence of God.

The logic of incarnation suggests that divine presence may be at its most potent because of the surrounding desolation rather than despite it. Like the innkeeper of Bethlehem, who unknowingly housed divinity, we keep discovering God’s presence in every borrowed basement and improvised shelter. In our brokenness we make room for sacred encounters, and so prove what Bethlehem first revealed: no circumstance is too dire for the glory of God to emerge.

Prince of Peace, as missiles and drones light our night sky the way that ancient star once lit the sky over Bethlehem, we seek You in Ukraine’s unlikely mangers. Transform us, like that humble manger, into cradles of Your presence. In every loaf shared during an air raid, in every candle lit during a blackout, in every act of love born out of suffering, let Your incarnation continue. As You wrapped Yourself in swaddling cloths, wrap our broken nation in Your peace. We wait for redemption behind two walls, as the world once waited in a stable. Until heaven’s promise fully dawns and the wars cease, make us bearers of Your incarnate hope in Ukraine’s hour of need. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ, who is with us in our own mangers: in basements and trenches and dugouts, and in every broken place. Amen.