Job 24:12

New International Version

The groans of the dying rise from the city,
    and the souls of the wounded cry out for help.

But God charges no one with wrongdoing.

For Encouragement

The carnage is always devastating. 

It is an age-old story everywhere people have fought wars—often senseless. Women, children, the aged, the disabled, and other vulnerable people have been the most affected. The story has been the same from the two World Wars to the Middle East, from Vietnam to Biafra and Rwanda. It displays our human depravity at its height. 

The fires continue to rage, and the blood of young men in the marshes and open fields continue to flow and call for justice. Unabashedly, the greedy and ambitious for power and domination continue in their wickedness. When stockpiles of ammunition continue to increase and become the pride of nations, for what else would they use them? Where does man try their war machines, and how do they recover their investments? Is it not to incite racial hatred and superiority on the battlefront?

Putin’s assault on Ukraine has opened the wounds of war and the cry of the innocent, while the entire world sits aghast, with their displayed impotent response. Commentary and excellent reportage have their place in highlighting the carnage. Conferences, condemnations, and declarations go so far to reveal the disgust of nations in New York and Brussels. However, they do not stop the war. Their best effort is the repeated display of hypocrisy and impotence.  

The cry of the wounded receives band-aid and cool-aid in response. Look deeply into the eyes of mothers crying over their babies, scrambling to get on trains to flee the rubbles of their homes, and you see only misery. 

Listen to the cry of the little boy dragging his belongings in a bag, fleeing his war-torn nation of Ukraine into Medyska in Poland, seemingly alone, and your heart will bleed. 

The worse is when people dismiss such horrors and the lies Putin tells to cover the atrocities based on their past national experiences. So, should the same continue everywhere? Must every nation taste the same bitterness before something concrete gets done? Should the strong continue to bully the weak unabated?

Wars reveal the worst of our desperately wicked hearts and point us to the love of God in Christ Jesus (John 3:16). They must arouse the best sentiments in humanity to embrace the only solution to this wickedness—salvation through Jesus Christ alone (Acts 4:12).

The Bible comes alive in times like this. The story from Genesis to Revelation reveals the fall of man in the Garden of Eden and the total depravity humans inherited as a result (Genesis 3:1-14). It tells the story of a loving God who cares so much that He moved to redeem humanity from their fallen nature and started the outpouring of His grace—a story of redemption that culminates in Christ Jesus as Lord and Savior. 

Through Jesus, God calls everyone to repentance (Acts 3:19) and reconciliation to Him (2 Corinthians 5:19-20). He freely offers eternal life to all who will believe in Christ (John 3:16). 

Unfortunately, it is the same Good News the wise and learned of this fallen world frown upon (1 Corinthians 1:18-25), holding technological advancement as evidence of human ability to create and make life better. What an illusion from the pit of hell!

Where is God in this wickedness?

Job wrestled with this question and seemed to suggest that God, against His nature (Exodus 2:23-24; Psalm 12:5), does not care for the plight of the oppressed. His cry points to a God who is not interested in stopping the oppressor (Job 24: 12-17). How wrong Job was when God eventually confronted him (Job 38:1-42:6).

Open to Psalm 73 and listen to the testimony of Asaph until he went into the house of the Lord and finally understood the end of people like Putin (Psalm 73:17).

Read Lamentations and hear the heartbreaking cry of Jeremiah over the devastation of Jerusalem by the Babylonian army. Flip to Habakkuk and listen to the complaint of Habakkuk about the aloofness of God amid oppression and the wickedness of the Babylonian army and note God’s response. The prophet learned God has a time for everything, and though wicked humans seem to prevail without restraint, His appointed time will come to avenge His people (Habakkuk 2:1-19). In the meantime, He calls on the world to see Him in His Temple and be silent before Him (20).

The ultimate will come when He will end everything in the War of Armageddon (Revelation 16:15-6) and usher in His Millennial Rule (20:1-10).

In the meantime, God calls on His people to be still and know that He is God. He will exalt Himself on the earth! The Lord of hosts, who is with us, is our refuge (Psalm 46:10-11).