Painkiller

Mariupol, a major port city of Ukraine was being ruthlessly bombed. No help would be coming. It was surrounded by Russian forces, and was holding out as long as it could – in order to tie up for as long as possible as much of the invading Russian army as possible.

Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine gave a speech. He addressed each part of the country and their unique struggles, detailing plans and hopes that the government had for them. When it came time to address Mariupol, his tone shifted radically, from one of logistical and martial optimism, to one of comfort and honor, because everyone knew that the city was doomed. The goal wasn’t to give hope, it was instead to instill dignity.

There are many Mariupol’s. The besieged. Gunfire and explosions seem to last forever within people as their minds continually struggle with the reality that there is no way out. It dominates their focus, as each new crater punches a hole in their emotional sanity. And when the siege has ended, and the destruction of whatever bad thing that has happened to them has ended, half the person seems to remain.

They pick themselves up, and approach their lives as hollowed out husks of who they were before their siege. The destruction has been wrought, and nothing and no one can undo that which has transpired in them. It seemed not to matter at all that they persisted in their innocence and did not falter in their character. They somehow still stand even when nothing in them seems to be.

In sincere assemblies of believers, wounds and difficulties abound in those attending and participating. They look to God for healing, for deliverance, for the siege to end, or for the rubble to be reconstructed into its former glory.

Preachers and ministers will try, and sometimes succeed in curbing pain and healing wounds. For many the wounds and pain will persist, and God will not heal them.

…because just like Mariupol, while fires burned, and buildings were toppled undeservedly it kept its innocence, and testified through its destruction to that which is evil, and that which is good. And just like Mariupol, a ruling voice was needed to clarify that the doom that was transpiring wasn’t for naught.

Most do not hear that voice. It’s difficult to discern in the hell of explosions, or in ringing ears of aftermath. But if it is heard, then all the pain takes on a different hue, and all the horrendous things that are transpiring no longer stab the mind and chest as they once did. Pride in self does something to pain that it is defenseless against.

… and UNLIKE Mariupol, we are not cities, and UNLIKE Mariupol, we often do not require rebuilding. Instead we require the glory that dignity affords us. All is lost, but now less of it justifies us. We are no longer spires of buildings, and sophistication of port business deals. Now we are wreckage with a God who walks its midst – now easily spotted since the hustle and bustle of what we were is now flattened ruin.

Many require no miraculous healing touch of God. Instead they must hear the truth: they are truly only half of something painfully longing for some other part of themselves they cannot see because they cannot conceptualize it without the Voice to tell them.

And this missing half is the dignity and glory that belongs to the betrayed and unjustly besieged. It’s the part of us that says “I stayed innocent through it all, despite all the terrible pain, and that MUST be proof that I am larger than I once was, and the agony I feel results from not being able to admit it to myself”.

To some it is a painful truth that one is greater than one once was. Departing from being an ordinary person means carrying the weight of responsibility to affirm oneself as someone of consequence going forward when necessary to do so.  – because when the siege begins, previously simple ways of how to perceive oneself threatens to  capsize the soul. After the siege ends, the responsibility changes from staying innocent during fire, to affirming increase in personal magnitude.

When this takes place the ruined city we were transforms from atrocity to trophy; from destruction to accomplishment. And all the pain that once was, seems suddenly struck dead by the increased size we have now taken shape as, but which we seemed to have pulled out of thin air with great effort, when it seemed the entire world tried desperately to testify against it, with only the Voice to guide the way to a godly form of personal glory.