Answers to Prayer

Lord make me an instrument of your peace
Where there is hatred let me sow love
Where there is injury, pardon
Where there is doubt, faith
Where there is despair, hope
Where there is darkness, light
And where there is sadness, joy

O divine master grant that I may
not so much seek to be consoled as to console
to be understood as to understand
To be loved as to love
For it is in giving that we receive
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned
And it's in dying that we are born to eternal life
Amen

This prayer traditionally attributed to St. Francis of Assisi has been such an encouraging and challenging meditation prayer for me over the years. I am encouraged because it centers me in the fact that there is a source greater than myself.  God is the headwaters of peace, love, pardon, faith, hope, light and joy and I am only a conduit of those things. I am challenged because it brings to me a greater awareness of a world of injury, doubt, despair, darkness, and sadness. We certainly live in a world filled with each in varying measures.

It also breaks me out of my ego centered flesh and refocuses my attention off of myself and on those whom I am blessed to meet. My ego tells me I want to be consoled, understood, and loved first. But God turns it all around and reminds me of God’s pattern. We are forgiven as we forgive. We receive as we give. And we are raised to new and eternal life as we die.

As I survey the current cultural landscape around me, I am awakened more every day to the timely nature of this prayer. You don’t have to look too hard to find hatred, injury, doubt, despair, darkness and sadness. But is it really that hard to find love, pardon, faith, hope light and joy? Perhaps what we are looking for, is what we find. And perhaps even as we are crying out these words to our divine master, we actually discover that as we understand, love, give and pardon, WE are the answers to the prayer.