BEING HUMAN

BeingHuman? As I am writing this on Blablacar (car sharing service) on the road from Kyiv, I got the news that the death toll of the Russian peaceful strike on Zaporizhzhia today took the lives of another 12… In the first four months of 2026, Russians killed at least 780 Ukrainian civilians and injured at least 4,352. It means one civilian is killed every 3 hours and 41 minutes, and one is wounded every 39 minutes. The pace is only increasing.

For us in Ukraine, these numbers are not just statistics; they are reminders of the passage of time during our work and ministry. Every 3 hours and 41 minutes, someone who was alive is lost. Every 39 minutes, someone is wounded. It does not include the lives and injuries of our defenders… This pattern continues through sleep, prayer, worship, and job duties. If you read this slowly, you’ll realize that during half a workday or a single sermon, another life is added to the count…

It is now the fifth year of the full-scale Russian war of terror, not just the fifth month. A child who started first grade when the missiles began is now finishing fifth grade. They have classes very often or mostly in bomb shelters (like in Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Kharkiv, and other cities and towns). That’s how we measure time here. The vast majority of Ukrainian children have grown up hearing air-raid sirens and explosions. Many young couples have never had a wedding without someone missing or already buried. The Russian death machine does not need to move faster, only to keep going… and it has….

The book of Job does not begin with a theology of suffering. It begins with a list: “and a messenger came to Job and said, ‘The oxen were plowing and the donkeys feeding beside them, when the Sabeans raided them and took them away – indeed they have killed the servants with the edge of the sword; and I alone have escaped to tell you!’“(Job 1:14–15, NKJV).

Four messengers, four reports. The text drives them in like nails: while he was still speaking, another came… The accumulation is the horror. None of the four messages alone destroys Job. It is the relentless arrival of the next one, before the previous can be heard, that breaks open the meaning of catastrophe…

We have been getting these messages almost every hour while doing our jobs and ministry, church and seminary work, and volunteering. We have received them, in one way or another, for 1,532 days.

Lamentations 3 describes what this does to a soul: I have forgotten what happiness is (forgive me, those who might say we must be happy even at daily funerals… no, evangelicals do not say that…). “And I said, ‘My strength and my hope have perished from the Lord.’” (Lamentations 3:18, NKJV). “This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope. Through the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.” (Lamentations 3:21–23, NKJV).

It does not say “they were new,” but “they are new every morning.” They are new on days 5, 500, 1,000, and 1,532. They are new on whatever day you read this. God’s mercies come as often as the casualties… faster than we can count, and most are only noticed by God, because often we cannot recognize them… because the Russian war of terror impacts your spirituality… Something many outside of Ukraine may not like (it is not an accusation)…

The Russian Federation invests in destruction, death, funerals, torture, rape, and looting. God invests in mornings. Right now, we live in the middle of both. Our calling, as long as we are here, is to keep counting both. Although our Mission has not changed… Every name, every wound, every trauma, every new day, and every loaf of bread or Word shared with those affected by the ongoing Russian war of terror.

“Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy” (Psalm 126:5, NKJV). We are still in the sowing, now on day 1,532 of ongoing Russian terror and the silence of Russian evangelical churches and seminaries… Keep your children away from war. Taras D, Ukraine (Korets)