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 is 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 in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Amen.
St. Francis of Assisi is not a patron saint, but a rebel.
This prayer of his, written in the early 1200's, could easily have been composed on a laptop today. He proposes not a new trail around to avoid our impenetrable thickets, but a different way of walking through those same difficult landscapes. We scan the skies for a rescue helicopter, and yet forget to pray for a courageous heart and well-worn hiking boots. God calls us to "Go this way, right into the fray," even with blisters, poison arrows or ivy, and no road atlas with a highlighted route.
Push back the darkness. Not just for what we find there, but what we discover along the way.
One line of Francis' prayer was written in neon lights when I read these words the other morning: Grant that we may not so much seek...to be loved as to love.
I have been praying about a hurtful situation from years ago, a wound that still threatens to bleed out every time I think about it. Lately, I have been led to pray differently, not now for the hurt to go away, but to pray for this person: Soften their heart and change their mind.
Over the weeks and months, on the outside of things, no visible difference in our interactions has emerged. But as I have prayed, unexpectedly I realized my own heart softening toward this person and my own mind changing. What to do, how to pray, how to respond, how to love. I don't know what is happening in that person's heart, but I am clearly aware of the tectonic shift in my own. See differently, walk differently, love differently. How do we approach this with a new heart because we are Jesus followers? How should we?
For if you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. Luke 6. 32
Jesus says we can love a whole lot better than that. Love your neighbor. Love the stranger among you. And as He did in His own life, Jesus takes it one notch further: Love those who are dead set against you. Even those we want to vilify to justify our own hurt or hardness of heart.
Loving others not that we would be loved, but because we already are by the Almighty.
God places impossible people in our lives simply because we need to love them, even through the uncountable complications. And providentially, we perhaps may be appointed the only one who can really love that particular person. Everyone struggles with something. All of us, no exclusions. Everyone is wounded in one way or a dozen. In loving difficult people, we realize God's love even more steadfast in our own difficult hearts with plenty to spare. Write His name all over it.
...and those who love His name shall dwell in it. Psalm 69. 36
I am trying to learn to love without any immediate response, whether that person ever hugs back or not, or without any response at all. Because love doesn't expect a return. And someday, someday, love may defrost the hardness and radiate through the cracks, and they just might blink. Or the light finally permeate through our own brokenness.
In his own pattern of simple words, St. Francis spelled out how rebellious love looks like. We live in a broken world. And God shows us daily how to go forth and walk differently into this mess. Pray, serve, forgive the hurt, come in peace, sacrifice convenience, bring healing as we are able, seek their best, bless the LORD even as we bless others, willing to take a long pilgrimage through a barren land, trusting God even in what looks like a hopeless hundred-mile wilderness. There are no lost causes in God's world. Nothing, but nothing, He cannot redeem.
Walking that way may not ever be acknowledged, nor ourselves be accepted, but we can be faithful to God even as He has loved us. Faithfulness never evaporates, but lingers ever stronger over time. And God strengthens us to live that way. He never expected us to walk or love alone. "I am right here with you."
Faithful is never "just faithful." Never underestimate the rootedness of the profound, covering inestimable acres farther than the horizon.
Loving that person may be the strongest witness we will ever bear before others. What if it changes the course of the day or a conversation? What if it completely alters the trajectory of someone's life? Even our own. Others are always watching us to see if this God of ours really changes hearts, and if our God is real.
Some things simply require the slow work of grace upon grace.
It is not that one day something might happen. Something is already afoot.
Soften my heart. Change my mind, O LORD.
