BEING HUMAN

Day 14, 14 December 2024, the 1025th day of the full-scale war.

Just when life in Nazareth had finally found its rhythm for Mary and Joseph, with the divine pregnancy explained by gentle wisdom, the quiet wedding celebrated by understanding hearts, the strained family relationships carefully mended, an imperial decree shattered that reconstructed peace and forced them onto dangerous roads. They did not choose the timing or the journey or the displacement, and they chose to recognize God’s presence inside it. The empire that disrupted their lives was unknowingly fulfilling a prophecy about the Messiah’s birthplace.

“Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem… to be registered with Mary, his betrothed wife, who was with child” (Luke 2:4–5, NKJV).

In the third year of this war we understand such disruptions intimately: how drones and missiles and mobilization orders redraw the map of a life, how an invasion forces us onto unexpected roads. The families of fallen defenders, my brother Andrii among them, must navigate life without a brother, a son, a father, a husband. Those whose people are in captivity live in suspended animation, each day a tension between hope and dread. Parents of missing soldiers search without end, their lives reduced to a single quest. Wives and children and parents of disabled veterans learn caregiving roles they never expected to fill, while the wounded rebuild lives around altered abilities and altered dreams.

Our war-altered paths echo that disrupted journey, since none of these families chose their new route. Wives did not choose widowhood. Children did not choose to grow up fatherless. Parents did not choose childlessness. Spouses did not choose to become caregivers. And each of us is challenged to recognize divine presence even on these hardest roads: the mother scanning lists of prisoner exchanges, the wife learning to care for a husband with combat trauma, the child growing up with only photographs of a father, all of them challenged to discover, as Mary and Joseph did, how to walk faithfully on a road they never wanted.

This reality challenges how we understand divine guidance. Sometimes God’s path does not look like peaceful leading at all, since it looks like responding faithfully to hostile circumstances and to betrayal. Their journey teaches us that divine purpose often works through external disruption rather than despite it. The empires of this world may dictate human movement, and they cannot control divine meaning.

The pattern of religious betrayal alongside authentic support reveals another parallel. Just as the spiritual leaders of Jerusalem, the priests and scribes, aided Herod’s deadly scheme by supplying scriptural knowledge while knowing his murderous character, so today many Orthodox and evangelical leaders in russia supply theological justification for a war against Ukraine. They know his history, his character, his actions, and they clothe imperial violence in spiritual language, betraying their brothers and sisters in Christ for the sake of political power.

God supported Mary and Joseph on their unexpected journey not through Herod’s religious establishment but through unexpected channels: an innkeeper who offered a manger, shepherds who came to recognize the child, magi who brought gifts. In the same way God supports Ukraine today not through the hierarchies that use Scripture and worship to bless an empire’s violence, but through partners who, like those shepherds and those foreign scholars, come to share a divine presence with us rather than to observe our suffering.

This contrast challenges how we understand spiritual leadership. Where institutional authorities in both eras chose political expediency over faithfulness to divine truth, authentic spiritual insight came through unexpected channels. The same God who bypassed the establishment in Jerusalem in order to reveal His Son to shepherds and foreign scholars goes on working through unlikely partners who choose solidarity over security, and divine truth over political power.

Mary and Joseph did not choose the road to Bethlehem, and they chose to see God’s presence on it. Perhaps our own trust in God reveals itself less in the paths we are given to choose than in how we discern His footprints, and the footprints of our companions, alongside our own on roads we are forced to travel, and in finding divine purpose on paths this war has chosen for us. Let us not forget that divine companionship remains, for those with eyes to see and ears to hear.

Prince of Peace, who guided Mary and Joseph through the demands of an empire, help us recognize Your presence on the unwanted paths of a war. When the war redraws the map of a life and an invasion forces new journeys, grant us grace to see Your purpose even in a road we did not choose. Make us aware of Your presence in our fellow travelers, and help us become signs of that presence for others on disrupted roads. We pray in the name of Jesus Christ, Lord of interrupted lives. Amen.