Pastor's corner - A channel of thy peace

God calls us to many challenges in our daily lives. Some as drastic as changing everything about our lives at a time when we would prefer just to stay where we are, comfortable and safe. Sometimes God calls us to new ideas that may cause our friends and neighbors to look at us funny, when we would prefer to keep thinking the way we always have and not rock the boat.

The journey of faith may tarry for a time, but God will not let us stay still for too long or remain comfortable in our thoughts and ideas forever. We serve the God of justice and love, who calls those who believe in him – who trust in him – to live out that message.

As we search for the call of God on our lives and the grace to see it through, the prayer of St. Francis is a good place to start. This is Mother Teresa’s version, used by her at the United Nations in 1985:

Lord, make me a channel of thy peace. That where there is hatred I may bring love, That where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness, That where there is discord, I may bring harmony, That where there is error I may bring truth, That where there is doubt I may bring faith, That where there is despair I may bring hope, That where there are shadows I may bring light, That where there is sadness I may bring joy. Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort that to be comforted, To understand than to be understood, To love than to be loved. For it is by forgetting self that one finds. It is by forgiving that one is forgiven, it is by dying that one awakens to eternal life.

May it be so.

Rev. Jeannette Solimine

United Church of Christ

Colfax