Ukrainian resilience is real. But what we need most from the global church is presence. In international conversations about the war in Ukraine, a familiar phrase appears again and again: Ukrainians are remarkably resilient.
Journalists speak of our courage. Church leaders speak of our endurance. Observers marvel at our ability to withstand what seems impossible to withstand.
There is genuine admiration in these words. Many people who say them sincerely care about Ukraine.
And yet, living in Ukraine throughout the full-scale war, I increasingly sense that the language of “resilience” sometimes creates a kind of distance. It allows the world to admire our strength without fully confronting our loneliness.
Ukrainians truly have shown resilience. But resilience is not the only emotion shaping our experience of this war. Alongside it lives another feeling: a sense of astonishment—sometimes turning into anger, sometimes into a quiet and weary grief.
What astonishes us most is not the brutality of our enemies. War has always carried brutality. We expected that.
What is harder to understand is the silence of those we once believed would remain close to us—friends, partners, and fellow believers.
Words often attributed to Martin Luther King Jr. feel painfully relevant today:
“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
In the first months of the war, many Ukrainian Christians described our situation through biblical images. One story in particular seemed to capture our experience: Daniel in the lions’ den.
It is an image of radical vulnerability. Daniel is placed in a space where human protection is impossible. His survival depends entirely on God.
Yet there is a detail in the story that is easy to overlook. The next morning the king comes to the edge of the pit and calls out: “Daniel, servant of the living God, has your God, whom you serve continually, been able to deliver you from the lions?” (Dan. 6:20).
The king cannot save Daniel. But he comes. He speaks. He acknowledges Daniel’s suffering rather than pretending the pit does not exist.
In the early months of the war, many Ukrainians felt that the world stood at the edge of our own “lion’s den.”
People asked us: Are you still alive?
Today the lions in the pit have not become fewer. But the number of people standing at its edge has noticeably diminished.
It is important to say this clearly: Ukrainians have not become less resilient.
But we have become more alone.
From time to time, international organizations and Christian groups come to Ukraine to speak about resilience. They organize conferences on trauma, seminars about psychological endurance, and workshops on recovery.
Much of this work is sincere and well-intentioned.
But sometimes it creates a strange moment.
People who spend most of their lives outside the reality of war arrive to teach resilience to those who have been living under missile attacks for years.
At moments like this, one almost feels tempted to respond: Thank you for the advice.
But perhaps what we need most right now is not an explanation of resilience.
Perhaps what we need is presence.
Christianity does not begin with a theory of suffering.
It begins with the incarnation.
The Gospel of John expresses it simply: “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:14).
God did not respond to human suffering by offering distant explanations.
He entered it.
Jesus did not remain far away from the brokenness of the world. He walked among those who suffered. He ate with them. He wept with them. He stayed with them.
For this reason the New Testament describes the life of the church in profoundly relational terms.
Paul writes: “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2).
Burden-bearing cannot happen at a distance. It requires proximity. It requires presence.
The church is not only a community that speaks truth.
It is a community that stays near.
The German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, writing from a Nazi prison, warned that the church ceases to be the church when it exists primarily for itself.
“The church is the church only when it exists for others,” he wrote.
Bonhoeffer had seen how easily Christian communities could become observers of suffering while remaining doctrinally correct and morally confident.
But observation is not Christian solidarity.
Christian faith calls believers to something deeper: to stand where suffering people stand.
Not merely to discuss justice, but to accompany those who are waiting for it.
Amid the fatigue and distance that often accompany a long war, certain examples of Christian faithfulness stand out.
One of them is Dnipro Hope Mission, a Christian ministry committed to serving vulnerable communities across Ukraine.
Through partnerships with local churches and ministries, the mission supports people from Donbas in the east to Transcarpathia in the west, from Kherson in the south to Uzhhorod near the Hungarian border.
They provide humanitarian aid, support hospitals, care for displaced families, and strengthen local ministries.
But what makes their work especially meaningful is not simply the range of their programs.
It is their commitment to stay.
To remain with communities not only during moments of crisis but throughout the long and difficult process of endurance.
Behind every project lies a simple conviction: people living through catastrophe need to know that someone has not forgotten them.
That someone is still here.
Psychological resilience rarely grows out of instructions.
It grows out of relationships.
When people know they are not alone. When someone remains beside them after the headlines fade. When someone refuses to disappear once the world’s attention moves elsewhere.
Presence creates a quiet but powerful realization:
we are not alone in the pit.
And often that realization becomes one of the deepest sources of resilience.
Today it is easy for the world to admire Ukrainian resilience.
It is much harder to share its cost.
Perhaps the most important question for the global church is not this: How resilient have Ukrainians proven to be?
The more important question may be this: Who is willing to stand beside them?
Because in the end the credibility of Christian faith is measured not only by what we say.
It is measured by where we choose to stand.
Will we remain at a distance, discussing suffering from a safe place?
Or will we move closer—into the pits of this world—and remain there with those who are still waiting for the dawn?