Welcome to our Sunday morning 10:00 a.m. worship service!
No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.
Rev. Chuck Rush’s sermon is entitled “Hope & Heartbreak”.
Want to learn more about Christ Church? Please email Associate Pastor Rev. Julie Yarborough: revjy@ccsnj.org
If you would like to make a donation to Christ Church you can go to: https://ccsnj.breezechms.com/give/online
Thank you for all the people who made this morning possible:
All the amazing members and friends of Christ Church!
Deb Trisler, Worship title slides, and order of worship
Sara Bolden, Tech Assistant
Keith Miller Murden, Tech Assistant
Griffin Shoemaker, Tech Assistant
Ravi Nanavati, Audio/Visual Coordinator
Mark Miller, Worship Production
Ludmilla Trigos – SOS Moment
Ukraine has been a contested land for centuries, but this most recent incursion into Ukraine after 30 years as a sovereign nation has touched my family deeply. I am a first-generation Ukrainian and Mexican American. My mother fled Soviet Ukraine at age 19 during World War II after her family endured decades of persecution by the Russian and Soviet governments. Her and her family’s flight has given me the privilege of being raised in a country where I did not fear for my life because of my background, religious beliefs or education. Her family lost their land and home first to the Communists after the revolution and Civil War and then again to the Germans during WWII. She lost her father during the Stalinist purges and her mother almost died during the man-made famine during collectivization when she worked as a teacher in a rural village. The invasion of Ukraine by Putin’s government has dealt us another huge blow and for my mother brings back memories of the war and all the other terrible losses that her family suffered because of an inhumane and repressive government.
There’s a 19th century poem that my mother would recite when she’d speak about the war. This poem was set to music and has been used as the Ukrainian national anthem since the 1990s and I think it says a lot about the Ukrainian national spirit. I’d like to read it in Ukrainian and in translation:
Ще не вмерла Украïни i слава, i вола,
Ще нам, браття мододii, усмхiнеться доля.
Згинуть нашi ворiженьки, як роса на сонцi.
Душу й тiло ми положим за нашу свободу,
I Покажем, що ми, браття, козацького роду.
Ukraine still has not perished, nor its glory and freedom,
Luck will still smile on us brother Ukrainians.
Our enemies will die, as the dew does in the sunshine,
And we too, brothers, will live happily in our homeland.
