God shines through: A woman tries to set up her tent (above) damaged by a windstorm that hit 60 refugee camps and 11 temporary shelters for earthquake survivors in Idlib, Syria. (Muhammed Said/Getty Images)
Wars are raging in many parts of the world and economic uncertainty, violence, pain, abuse of power, corruption, climate change and natural disasters upend nations.
This prompts the centuries-old question: where is God amid the rubble of war, death and suffering?
Vladyslav, who asked that his full name not be used, is a frontline worker in Ukraine’s war-affected regions who fled his home town when Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February last year.
He was about to open a business, but had to leave central Ukraine to live in the country’s safer western region.
While speaking to Mail & Guardian this week, he received the news that a close friend had been killed in the eastern Ukraine city of Bakhmut.
The Wagner Group, a Russian paramilitary mercenary organisation, claimed legal control over Bakhmut at the start of the week, but Ukraine counter-claimed it and continues to fight.
About the death of his friend, Vladyslav said: “It’s sad and painful. What can we say?”
He does not question why God allowed the Russian invasion to take place and the war to continue. Instead, he urges fellow citizens to take heart. “The truth is that God is in the midst of every dark moment and He wants us to call on Him and trust Him because He’s closer than ever.”
Luda Bryn left Kyiv three days after the Russian invasion started. She fled to Chernivtsi, a city in the western part of the country, but has since returned to Kyiv.
Speaking to the M&G from Ukraine, she said she continues to praise God despite the war because “through His mercy we can still have a glimpse of eternal hope”.
It was her faith prior to the war that has kept her steadfast during the war, she said, adding that God had led her in the past, and would lead her into the future.
Her faith in Jesus Christ did not render her immune from the “sin and brokenness of the world”, yet there was deep comfort in having a personal relationship with the Christian saviour.
Thousands of kilometres from war-torn Ukraine, conflict in Mozambique has led to suffering and fear for millions of people.
Insurgents infiltrated Cabo Delgado province in 2017 and as a result, about one million people — half of Cabo Delgado’s population — remain displaced today. Further destruction occurred when tropical cyclone Freddy caused widespread flooding and damaged homes and infrastructure.
An aid worker in Cabo Delgado, who asked to remain anonymous, said the past six years of violence that ripped through villages and towns has taken an emotional, spiritual and physical toll.
“A strenuous joyless existence has become the norm for many, many people in our province. A friend, once an industrious woman who planted large fields of rice, maize and other crops, working for the well-being of her family, is now impounded within her village boundaries unable to do her work,” she said.
The aid worker recalled how another family fled their village and had to again flee from a second and later a third village. Others lost their lives.
Amid the devastation and almost constant change, the aid worker still believes that “our future is secure”.
“Although the struggle or pain which our final hour might bring causes fear, we have no doubt about the glorious eternal existence which will follow. I do not have to worry whether I have attained a level of holiness or good works which is good enough to enter into God’s loving presence. Jesus has already attained this for me.”
Another family remembered when insurgents attacked their town in February 2021. Their house and belongings were burned. It was “a dark time for us”.
Despite the spread of insurgents, the family repeats the words of the Old Testament book of Habakkuk where the prophet wrote in chapter three, verses 18 and 19: “Yet I will rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in the God of my salvation. The Sovereign Lord is my strength. He makes me as surefooted as a deer, able to tread upon the heights.”
Before the prophet rejoiced in the Lord, he called out in chapter one, verse two: “How long, Lord, must I call for help, but you do not listen? Or cry out to you, ‘Violence!’ but you do not save?”
Gert Breed, a retired professor at North-West University’s faculty of theology, said that at times, external and internal circumstances are so dark, “that we cannot experience that He is with us,” but that this “does not mean He is not there”.
The Gospel promises that nothing happens outside the divine will of God.
“God does not leave any evil unpunished and that is precisely why He came to bear the penalty for our sins in Jesus Christ,” explained Breed.
Mardeh, an Antiochian Greek Orthodox town in Syria — a country where recent earthquakes killed thousands and a 12-year civil war killed half a million people and displaced millions more — stands in stark contrast to cities such as Homs and Aleppo, where large heaps of rubble once were homes or businesses.
In Mardeh, no building or house shows signs of war, according to Mike Burnard, an analytical strategist at the mission consultant organisation dia-LOGOS. He visited the country a week before the devastating 6 February 7.8-magnitude earthquake on the Türkiye-Syria border.
Burnard had asked citizens whether the town of Mardeh was spared during the war. A pastor responded: “Oh no my brother, nobody was spared. Muslim, Christian, Kurd, Yazidi; we all suffered the same fate, indiscriminately. Bombs do not fall on non-believers only.”
Throughout the Bible, it is clear that God does not always protect his followers from getting hurt, said Breed. God also does not always reveal why bad things happen.
But, “when [we] shift our focus from what we don’t understand, to what we do understand about God, the cross and His love, there is peace in our lives despite the pain that is still there”.
Breed added that when God does provide reasons for the hurt we experience, it is clear that hardship can make our faith grow.
“When I persevere in faith despite the hardship, I glorify God with it and people see my faith in Him that much more clearly.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian and pastor who was hanged in a concentration camp for resisting the Nazi regime, wrote: “Just as Christ is only Christ as one who suffers and is rejected, so a disciple is a disciple only in suffering and being rejected, thereby participating in crucifixion. Discipleship as allegiance to the person of Jesus Christ places the follower under the law of Christ, that is, under the cross.”
As we share in Jesus’s suffering in this temporary world, Easter reminds us of the empty tomb. After Jesus died for every suffering and sin in our lives, He rose victorious, and by faith, so have we.