A heartbreaking image from Ukraine

Source: Reuters

It is said that pictures can tell a 1,000 words. The photograph of this bewildered bicyclist above from Ukraine does that and much more – it depicts what should be the joy of cycling set against a backdrop of death, chaos, and utter destruction. This gentlemen should be riding his bicycle for fun, fitness, and recreation. Instead, politics, greed, animosity, and violence have brought Ukraine to the precipice.

Please pray and hope that Ukraine can be brought back from the brink of Civil War, that political leaders both inside and outside of Ukraine will find common ground, that negotiators will forge solutions, that people will build the bonds of love, and that lasting peace can reign.

In the poignant words of Guns n’ Roses, “what’s so civil ’bout war anyway?”

{What we’ve got here is failure to communicate
Some men, you just can’t reach
So, you get what we had here last week
Which is the way he wants it, well, he gets it
An’ I don’t like it any more than you men}

Look at your young men fighting
Look at your women crying
Look at your young men dying
The way they’ve always done before

Look at the hate we’re breeding
Look at the fear we’re feeding
Look at the lives we’re leading
The way we’ve always done before

My hands are tied
The billions shift from side to side
And the wars go on with brainwashed pride
For the love of God and our human rights

And all these things are swept aside
By bloody hands time can’t deny
And are washed away by your genocide
And history hides the lies of our civil wars

D’you wear a black armband when they shot the man
Who said, “Peace could last forever”?
And in my first memories, they shot Kennedy
I went numb when I learned to see

So I never fell for Vietnam
We got the wall of D.C. to remind us all
That you can’t trust freedom when it’s not in your hands
When everybody’s fightin’ for their promised land

And I don’t need your civil war
It feeds the rich, while it buries the poor
You’re power hungry, sellin’ soldiers
In a human grocery store, ain’t that fresh?
I don’t need your civil war

Look at the shoes you’re filling
Look at the blood we’re spilling
Look at the world we’re killing
The way we’ve always done before

Look in the doubt we’ve wallowed
Look at the leaders we’ve followed
Look at the lies we’ve swallowed
And I don’t want to hear no more

My hands are tied
For all I’ve seen has changed my mind
But still the wars go on and the years go by
With no love of God or human rights

‘Cause all these dreams are swept aside
By bloody hands of the hypnotized
Who carry the cross of homicide
And history bears the scars of our civil wars

{We practice selective annihilation
Of mayors and government officials
For example to create a vacuum
Then we fill that vacuum
As popular war advances, peace is closer}

I don’t need your civil war
It feeds the rich while it buries the poor
You’re power hungry, sellin’ soldiers
In a human grocery store, ain’t that fresh?
I don’t need your civil war

I don’t need your civil war
I don’t need your civil war
You’re power hungry, sellin’ soldiers
In a human grocery store, ain’t that fresh?
I don’t need your civil war

I don’t need one more war
I don’t need one more war

What’s so civil ’bout war anyway?

SOURCE: Guns ‘N Roses – Civil War Lyrics | MetroLyrics