I struggle when I feel like I’m not in control.  Perhaps you can sympathize.

For most of my conscious life, I have railed against being “out of control,” or “not understanding what is happening.”  When my felt inability to change the outcome of given situation goes down, my discomfort and shows of unhelpful emotion go up.  As anyone who has ever seen me really uncomfortable will attest, I don’t do a good job of hiding it either, much to my chagrin and to the harm of people around me.  I become very difficult to be around.

In addition to the struggling to being out of control, I have a bad habit of taking on responsibility for things that are not my responsibility or that I can’t actually control.  When I find myself in situations where I’m trying to control something that is beyond me, I exhaust myself physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually casting myself repeatedly against the figurative immovable object.  The ethos I seem to have unwittingly adopted is along the lines of, “change this, or die trying.”  Again, you can imagine what I am like to be around when I’m in the middle of this futile show of misplaced faith.

It should go without saying, then, that this past couple of weeks following the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been difficult for me to process.  I am desperate to do something to make this horror stop, and that ability is utterly beyond me.  If I’m honest, I feel very small.  Decisions are being made which impact our world, and no one bothered to consult me.  (The nerve.)  But you don’t have to be a psychologist, counselor, political scientist, or world leader to see very clearly the problem in what I’ve written here so far: there is a delusion I have about what I am powerful to do that is being challenged and it is the challenging of this delusion which causes the reaction in me.  I am, apparently, more than happy to spend most of the time living in a fantasy world where I pretend I am much more powerful than I actually am.  When I am forced to return to the real world, the real me and my impotence (and all of my negative traits) stand out even more.

I was reminded today of a Calvin and Hobbes comic from May 28, 1988, which touches on a similar theme.  Calvin and Hobbes begin the strip on that day admiring the stars.  Hobbes (the wizened stuffed tiger) comments that it’s a clear night and that there are millions of stars.  Calvin takes the opportunity to show of his knowledge about the expansiveness of the universe and how comparatively small the earth and its people are.  There’s a beautiful panel with the two characters looking into the sky, before the final panel shows the two characters walking to go inside with Calvin, looking quite perturbed, suggesting he is going to “go in and turn on all the lights.” 

The sky is all fine and good when it’s dots of light that are there for his enjoyment, but the moment it becomes an impersonal tapestry of terrifying astrophysics—forces too big and dangerous to conceive of–Calvin needs to do something to feel comfort. Home is the ticket, and he goes there and wages his battle against the dark expanse by controlling all the light he can muster.  I’m sure his parents were pleased with the power bill!

I suppose that Calvin’s attempt to return to a safe place where there is warmth and light in the face of a cold, immense, and uncaring universe is not so different from my illusions of control. 

I don’t think there’s any use pretending at this point that most of us have any power to change what Vladimir Putin is going to do.  We don’t command the Russian army, or the Ukrainian army, or NATO.  We can’t change the flight path of a cruise missile.  Most of us do not possess the power to prevent a bullet from striking a fleeing mother in Kyiv, unless we were physically present, and that only once.  If someone is going to push the button to launch a nuclear missile, none of us can stop them.  None of us are particularly hard to kill if someone was determined.

But what I’m striving for today is to focus on what I can do to “turn on the lights” in my own home.  I continue to pray, believing that God IS powerful to affect outcomes in situations where I can’t.  I am looking for ways to help the people of the Ukraine, and I hope for the opportunity to aid the Russian people when Putin eventually is not their leader—they also suffer in this time and stand to suffer longer than the destruction being meted out on the Ukraine, though obviously there aren’t any bombs falling on Moscow or St. Petersburg right now.  There are people who need care, and while I can’t stop a war, I can shelter those who flee from one.

That’s not a new opportunity.  Ukraine is not the first country to be ripped apart by war and political violence in the past decade.  People continue to suffer in Syria and Yemen, and many other parts of our world.  There is no shortage of people who need help.  In 2020, several sources put the number of people needing help at more than 55 million (Here’s one, from the UN.).  In the face of a world that has evil and destruction we can’t contain or stop, there is something we can do: we can expand the circles of our own lives to include caring for those who are suffering.  There are a few ideas I’ve heard about this that I like that you could participate in.

You could give to an aid organization on the ground: the Red Cross, World Vision, Samaritans Purse, etc.

You could work with other aid organizations who are selling products and giving the proceeds to humanitarian care efforts (in the Ukraine or elsewhere).

You can work with organizations that care specifically for refugees.  We Welcome Refugees is a Christian organization that is actively engaged in this space.  They are promoting an initiative now to help resettle Afghan refugees who’ve come to the United States following the humanitarian disaster there (remember that?).

You could get creative—I saw today someone was buying out Airbnb’s in Kyiv so they could send money directly to the Ukrainian owners immediately.  These German families went to the train station in Berlin so they could personally welcome and help Ukrainian refugees find safe places to stay.

The hatred and rivalries that cause armed conflicts in our world can’t be stopped by one person bending all their attention and energy on them—we’re not superheroes.  But if all of us engage in doing the right thing to care for people, ultimately the dogs of war will starve for the lack of the hatreds and fears upon which they feed.  The fires of war can be smothered by a lack of oxygen if we will individually and corporately sacrifice to do what is right.

When we do, we will see our illusions of control vanish, but our usefulness in the real world increase.  Instead of feeling anxiety, we can grow in love and compassion for those we CAN help.  We will be so busy doing the right things—things that we can do something about–that everything else will fade into the background.  We will be as in control as any limited human can be, and we will not be paralyzed by things happening outside our circles that we can’t control in favor of doing what is right where we are.

That leads to the final thing we can do: we can refuse to foster hatred and fear in our own hearts—we can refuse to be soil for the seeds that war and strife plant.  The Ukrainian people this past ten days have shown amazing bravery standing in the face of almost certain destruction.  Their resilience and unity is an inspiration.  While we do not face the same threat, we can learn from them.  In the face of forces too big for us to control, we use our limited control best when we use it closest to us.  There are things you and I can do right now to aid people who are hurting in our world.

When the Bible speaks about the responsibilities we have as human beings and as followers of Jesus Christ, he doesn’t suggest that we have the authority or power to change the world in the way I sometimes wish I could in my desire to control things. But the Bible absolutely counsels us to make the most of the opportunities we have to do to good, to show love (more on that here), to care for those who are hurting, and to practice hospitality. While we don’t have the power necessary to stop war, we do have the imparted authority to pray with conviction that God’s power will ultimately triumph, and then to act as God empowers us to do–where we are, with everything we have.

In these difficult days, I hope you will be able to focus on giving the best of what you have where you are, and that you feel the empowerment of Jesus as you do.