A Real Source of Hope and Joy

Those of you who have followed our updates will know of the strange request we received from our Ukrainian friends recently: to provide them with bulletproof vests.

As we frantically sourced and sent them to the Eastern front, I thought, “Well, it is probably just like with our safety car belts: there is a small chance we will ever really need them, but let’s keep them on, just in case.” I was wrong.

Just a couple of days after they were delivered, I received a phone call telling me that one of the rescue teams had been ambushed. The bulletproof vest that we had been able to source in Austria and deliver to Ukraine saved one volunteer’s life.

In that moment, I was so relieved we did not send the vests with the next, more convenient transport. I was glad for not buying in to the doubt of whether it was worth the extra trip. Instead, we had two volunteers take two days off work, travel for many hours and for thousands of kilometres, pay for the expensive fuel, only to hand over the few pieces of, well, “extra curricular” equipment.

Thank God we dropped that efficiency logic and did something inconvenient and costly. It paid off, and how!

When we approach Easter, it can feel as though the experience of the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection, repeated every year, is like my approach to the seat belts (or bulletproof vests): useful, when finally needed, but practically far from daily use.

But the last weeks have caused a substantial shift in my approach.

Not that the eternal and post-resurrection state were ever unimportant, but they were so out there, waiting to be deployed when needed (sometime, in the distant future). Faced with the enormity of the death-toll of the war in Ukraine - both parties to the conflict have sustained incredibly huge losses - and confronted with how unexpectedly death came to thousands of lives, I am holding on to the promise of the resurrection. Without its reality, the current situation would be unbearable.

And so this Easter will be different for me. Praying for the peace in Ukraine and thinking about those I will no longer meet on this side of eternity, but who, because of Jesus’ willingness to pay the highest price for them, and thus conquering death itself, have a glorious, bodily future ahead of them, as Scripture highlights on so many occasions.

And so my wish for you and for me this Easter is that the resurrection of the dead will not just be part of a dogma we affirm, but a real source of hope and joy, and that like St. Paul we will aim

“to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.” (Phil 3:11)

Yours,

Andrzej