History is repetitive

Ecclesiastes 1:9;10

One thing that has caught my attention lately has been how history is repetitive. I read the book of Ecclesiastes right at the beginning of the pandemic, and what stood out to me was that he seemed to be bored with life on this earth. For him there was nothing new under the sun, everything is vanity. What is my role on this Earth, if everything repeats itself, does all my hard work and struggle make sense? I have asked myself these questions many times and I have faced them.

About 100 years ago, the Spanish flu hit the planet hard and in 1918-1919 there were between 50-100 million victims. Also during this period 1914-1918, the First World War took place. Here we are after 100 years of a pandemic during a war in Europe with about the same events. Who would have thought a few years ago that a virus would hit an entire planet and cause so much damage or that a war would break out in Europe?

Because of this, I realized that what could I do better with my life than continue to dedicate it to God’s service, to serve Him regardless of the circumstances. Maybe I can’t plan everything the way I want it, but I know that as long as I’m in His plan, He will take care of me.

In the past few months, I have responded to the crisis caused by the war and made myself available as I could. One of the biggest needs of refugees was to get away from the war and go to Western countries far enough that they are safe. We made many trips from Romania to different Western countries by car; full of mothers and children. I saw many gloomy faces, as in faces without any hope, it is very difficult to express in words the feelings I felt. Dozens of desperate people, with different stories and experiences that seem to come out of a movie. A story that stuck in my mind was with a mother and her baby. She told me that while she was trying to escape from Ukraine she was in a bus on a bridge and they were attacked by the Russian army. She told me how they threw bombs on either side of the bridge. She took her little boy and they managed to escape across the bridge. She told me she didn’t know how she got through either, but luckily all the bombs didn’t fall  on the bridge they had to cross.

I am glad that we are still living in times of peace in Romania and as long as it will be like this I will continue to help and make myself available with everything I can do. History will always repeat itself, there will be nothing new on Earth as Ecclesiastes said, so what can I do better than to encourage, to listen to people with a heavy heart, to help them get where they need to be and beyond all of that to pray for them to discover the true refuge in God.