Earlier this week, I found myself doing what many of us have been doing – taking stock of the world around us. Rising gas prices. Inflation that seems to touch everything. The weight of trying to help a child navigate college in a world that feels like it’s changing faster than we can keep up.

I sat down on Monday to write this Pastor’s Pen, but something told me to wait. I had lunch scheduled for Tuesday with Pastor Gray Norsworthy and a couple from Ukraine, and I suspected that conversation might have something to say to me before I said anything to you.

I’m glad I waited.

I had lunch with Robert Gamble and Olya Balaban, who lead a ministry called “This Child Here.” Their work centers on children whose lives have been upended by the war in Ukraine. They provide daily activities – seven days a week – for kids living under the strain of conflict. In the summer, they host a camp in Bulgaria where mothers and their children can step away, if only for a time, into a space of healing – outdoor play, therapy, and simple, sacred work of being together again. They’ve even helped Ukrainian students find their way to high schools and colleges here in the United States.

At one point during lunch, Robert pulled out his phone and showed me a video. It was taken in their apartment. You could hear the unmistakable sound of a drone overhead along with the crack of gunfire of defenders firing into the sky. It was not a distant headline. It was not a statistic. It was their life.

And just like that, my perspective shifted.

It didn’t make our concerns disappear. The things we carry are real. The pressures, the uncertainties, the questions about the future – they matter. But it did remind me how easily our field of vision can narrow, how quickly we forget that the world is both larger and more fragile than we sometimes realize.

And it reminded me of something else.

This Sunday, we will hear Jesus say, “Do not let your hearts be troubled.” (John 14:1). Those words are not spoken from a place of ease or distance. They are spoken on the edge of everything falling apart – spoken into fear, uncertainty, and a future the disciples cannot yet see clearly.

In other words, they are spoken for a world very much like ours.
“Do not let your hearts be troubled” is not a command to ignore reality. It is an invitation to trust that reality is not all there is. It is a reminder that even in a world of rising prices, uncertain futures, and even the horrors of war, there is still a deeper truth: Christ is present. Christ is leading. Christ is, as he says, “the way, the truth, and the life.”

Sometimes finding “the way home” begins not by solving everything in front of us, but by lifting our eyes just enough to see beyond ourselves – into the lives of others, into the work of compassion, into the quiet but persistent movement of God’s Spirit in the world.

I left that lunch grateful – not just for the perspective, but for the witness of people who are choosing, in the midst of chaos, to create spaces of hope for children.

It made me wonder:
Where is God inviting us to widen our vision?
Where is Christ already at work, even now, calling us to follow?

We may not be able to fix everything. But we can listen. We can care. We can pray. And we can trust that the One who is leading us will not abandon us along the way.

For more about “This Child Here” go to www.thischildhere.org

See you Sunday!

Blessings,
Pastor Greg

Pastor Greg
pastorgreg@lawrencevillepresbyterian.org