A Peaceful Passing of Time

As we watch from a distance, we pray for the situation between Ukraine and Russia, hoping for peace, a peace that will last. Here’s our prayer.

Time passes,
days move on.
Politicians play their part,
debating, waiting.
Troops are deployed,
sanctions employed.
Each nation spins their own story,
hails their own history
tells their own tale
of sorrow and woe.

And on the ground
the people wait
between the drones
in hushed tones,
where troops hide between the skeleton bones
of bombed buildings,
a whispered word away from those 
who have become their enemy.
Frightened people flee home to safety,
fear the worst
wish for more.

The frontier is a fragile place,
a borderland where difference meets,
a place of conflict, fights and foes,
but also the meeting of minds
where people can look into the life of another
and hold hands across a world of difference.

As men are manoeuvred,
weighted by weapons,
we wait
and pray
for a peaceful passing of time.

There is no easy way for peace.
It is demanding
and demands so much
of us
as we inhabit this blighted and beautiful
blue and green globe,
and walk across borders
and the boundaries of our lives.

It is the place where Jesus walked,
treading his way across the borderlands,
stepping in and out of people’s lives,
embracing the stranger,
a friend to the foreigner,
speaking peace when faced
by the face of aggression.
The curtain is torn from top to bottom.
His own death hails another world,
a different way,
where Divine dreams
drop dews of peace 
upon the landscape of war.

And here we are,
watching from a distance,
waiting for the worst,
wishing for more,
praying for the invasion of peace,
an action of military proportions
that transcends, transforms, the human trauma.

There is no easy way,
as we pray
for Ukraine and Russia
for that borderline fight for peace,
and a peaceful passing of time.

God our Father, may your peace, which is beyond all understanding, fill the hearts and minds of all. May those who walk the borders seek peace not pain, and wander across the ways of justice and love. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.