Wednesday, May 27, 2020
Sandra Pagel
What is a prayer that has special meaning for you?
In the mid 1960’s, I became acquainted with a prayer that remains a mainstay for me. A friend invited me to a Quaker meeting. The meeting form was similar to our Centering Prayer and began, “Lord, make us instruments of your peace”. These were turbulent times for our nation – a war, civil rights movement and community unrest. Suddenly, here was a beacon of light in the prevailing darkness.
This prayer for peace and transformation grounds and focuses me with a message of love, pardon, union, faith, hope, light and joy that can overcome hatred, injury, discord, doubt, despair, darkness and sadness. These words are comforting, but also a call for action.
Many voids have been created in recent months. This empty space is being filled by dedicated caregivers, those providing basic services, many sewing masks and devoting time to prayer. Spring flowers are now blooming, sparrows nesting, chipmunks frolicking around us, and placards in front of buildings read: Be Kind, Help Others, Thank You and Congratulations. For me, family and friends deliver food and necessities, calls offer help, and virtual services and messages nourish me spiritually. As I awake from this slumber, venture out, and fill more open space, please let me remember:
Lord, make us instruments of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon;
where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope; where there darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
Grant that we 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 giving that we receive; it is pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is dying that we are born to eternal life,
Amen