Day 2 - Peace be with you

As a teenager, I used to watch M.A.S.H. with my parents, who had served in the Royal Air Force - plus I quite fancied Alan Alda. Perhaps the programme influenced my first choice of career – student nurse - who knows?

Whenever there are re-runs of M.A.S.H, I try to tune in, perhaps to recapture my childhood, to see black humour helping those serving to get through, or to remind myself that war is not really a subject for humour.

But on Thursday, 24th February, we could not settle in front of the current re-run because suddenly war had come very close and watching the antics of Pierce and Hunnicutt did not seem appropriate… but nor did anything else. The day had passed in a fog – I just wanted to wake up and realise it was all a dream. Having watched an hour of BBC news coverage, we travelled to the NEC for the Caravan and Camping Show, listening to Radio 5Live on the journey. While at the exhibition, we had a text telling us some bad news that affected one of our granddaughters and then my son phoned, with very exciting news. Both David and I responded in a rather flat fashion, so much so that half an hour later David felt compelled to send a congratulatory text. The good news had not sunk in; in fact, I wondered if it would turn out not to be glad tidings after all.

Do you see what I’ve done here? I’ve made the Ukraine crisis all about me! Admittedly I was completely numb but I’m an ordained minister! Where were my prayers? They were those that the apostle Paul wrote of in Romans 8:25-27 (GNT):

“… if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. In the same way the Spirit also comes to help us, weak as we are. For we do not know how we ought to pray; the Spirit himself pleads with God for us in groans that words cannot express. And God, who sees into our hearts, knows what the thought of the Spirit is; because the Spirit pleads with God on behalf of his people and in accordance with his will.”

That’s a wordy way of saying that if we just sit silently and think about the pictures we have seen, the interviews we have heard and are too horrified to speak, God understands and considers that we have prayed and what we have prayed is this: “Your will be done”.

But what is God’s will?

A Jesuit, James Martin, reminds us that one of the commonest phrases in Jesus’s ministry was “Peace be with you”. They are the first words Jesus says to his disciples after the resurrection, according to Luke. Jesus’ will was peace for the disciples and for us. So we should pray to discern our role in bringing about peace – God’s will – especially in Ukraine.

Use your own words or none – God understands.

Elaine Kinchin