In recent months, many people have emphasized the supposed “economic crisis” that has affected Ukraine.  Others have focused on the “swine flu” crisis that has brought concern to many.  Still others have highlighted the political crisis and this week’s presidential elections which reflect the divisions within this nation.  

  But a far deeper crisis exists that few seem eager to address.  

  This crisis can been seen in the nearly freezing body of Natasha, whom I found laying in the snow by the side of the road.  She was extremely drunk and it was late at night.  After getting her into our van, it took about an hour of driving around and thawing her out before her vodka-impaired mind could clear and she could even remember an address to where she could be taken.  She cried as she tried to express her gratitude in the confused words that she could stutter in her intoxicated state.  

  Then there was Gennady, whose drunken form I nearly ran over, as he lay in the middle of the dark, village street overcome by alcohol.  It took nearly all my strength to lift him into the car and, finally, a neighbor directed me to the house where he lived.  As I left him slumped against his door, he grabbed my arm and tried to focus on my face through the fumes of alcohol.  “Thank you...You’re truly a friend....”

  Then, there was Zhenya, who set off the car alarm on our van as he stumbled against it, drunk, near our ministry center.  “What can I do?” he slurred, weeping, as lifted him into the vehicle and drove him home.   “How can I be free?”  But his fogged mind couldn’t seem to grasp the words about Christ that I spoke to him.  Helping him out of the car, he asked, “How about just a few more grivni so that I can get another drink...?”

  And then, Nikolai.  Two nights ago, he was passed out on the road in front our house, where his inebriated stupor made him oblivious to the January cold.  He was 31 years old but looked 20 years older.  “Where do you live?” I kept asking him.  His watery eyes blinked as he tried to understand who was talking to him.  “Right here...This is my house...Let me sleep...” Finally, I called the paramedics and after an hour and a half of phone calls and interrogations, we found his uncle’s house.  He wouldn’t die on the street - at least not that night.  

  There are others whose names I don’t know.  Like the drunken pedestrian on the highway through the village of Skelki last week on January 7th, the Ukrainian Christmas evening.  We swerved sharply to avoid running over his broken body seconds after he had been hit by another car, completely shattering it’s windshield.   As I knelt by him and carefully put a pillow from our car under his broken skull, I prayed that God would somehow have mercy and not let him perish here on this dark village street.  I covered his twisted form with our daughter’s blanket and listened to his breathing while we waited 45 minutes for the ambulance we had called to finally arrive.  As I knelt over him in the cold, the all-too-familiar and accursed stench of alcohol drifted up from the blood-soaked face.  

  For all the talk about economic, political and medical problems, from where I stand here in Ukraine, the biggest crisis that I can see is spiritual.  People are perishing as they try vainly to fill their empty lives with an alcoholic sedative that momentarily helps them to forget the meaninglessness and hopelessness that they feel.   How desperately they need their hearts to be opened to the words of Jesus, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly!   I am come to seek and save that which was lost!  I am come that those dwelling in darkness might see a great light!  I am come that they might not perish but have everlasting life!”  

  In the eyes of the world, I know that I’m too simplistic.  But I live in a simple Ukrainian village.  And from what I see around me every day, there’s only one real crisis and it has very little to do with the economy, the flu, or politics.  There’s only one crisis.  Sin.  And there’s only one Solution.  A Savior.