CAPTION: "Prayer doesn't just change the world, it changes us and raises a defiant protest at all that is wrong in the world"
Bishop of Plymouth Reflects How Prayer Stops Us Being Powerless in the Face of War in Ukraine
The Bishop of Plymouth, the Right Reverend Nick McKinnel, shares his reflection on the situation in Ukraine and the power of our prayers at this time:
Writing as I am in mid-March, the world is overshadowed by the war in Ukraine. With Russian troops closing in on Kyiv and Western politicians powerless to intervene, the news is dominated by devastating pictures of violent destruction. Tanks are on the streets, refugees flooding across borders, frightened old people huddle in freezing basements, Ukrainian soldiers defend with courage and resolve.
Where the dogs of war will have taken us by next month is anybody’s guess – but where it needs to take us is to our knees. Prayer doesn’t just change the world, it changes us. It raises a defiant protest at all that is wrong in our world. It offers us God’s perspective as we feel something of his pain at creation gone awry. It spurs us on to compassion and to work for justice. It invites us to a renewed commitment to the cause of Christ.
Holy Week in April will take us through Passiontide and the sufferings of Jesus: his betrayal and arrest; the mockery of a trial; the casual cruelty of the Roman soldiers and his lonely journey to the cross. As we hear the story told again we will be only too aware of the sufferings of humanity, and of the Son of God who (in Peter’s words) bore our sins in his body on the cross and by whose wounds we have been healed. His cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” will be echoed across Eastern Europe by the bereaved and bereft.
But the story does not end with the cry of dereliction, or the silent despair of Holy Saturday. In the empty tomb of Easter morning and the trembling witnesses of the risen Jesus, God brings life from death and hope from despair.
And maybe we can take encouragement from the journey into faith of the Russian novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Each changing situation, from working as a young physicist in Rostov, through commanding an artillery battery on the Russian front, on into arrest and the years of Arctic labour camps, and then cancer, marriage breakdown and deportation – all this led him to see emerging the sacredness of the value of truth, compassion and freedom, values which he recognised as uniquely embodied in the Christian faith.
Let’s pray for those same values to emerge in our life here in Devon and across the world.
The Right Reverend Nick McKinnel
You can find prayers for Ukraine here.