We were filled up in some ways and drained in others as we gathered for worship this morning, back on campus at Kent State University following the Fall Retreat. I was emotionally elated for the ways that steps of faith were taken and relationships were established over the weekend, but physically exhausted from poor sleep and poor diet. I felt a little bit like a farmer who worked hard to get seed in the ground under favorable conditions, dirty and depleted and dragging myself into Bowman Hall for our weekly worship gathering.

Fortunately, we had arranged for a guest speaker — so I was able to play a more passive role. Bruce Chouinard is a retired pastor who has lived in Kent for decades and played a key support role in the establishment of H2O Church on campus. And he preached from Matthew 5:27-30 in a way that provided both challenge and comfort. At the end of his sermon, he closed by praying a thousand-year-old prayer that has been attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi:

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;
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 with all my soul.
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.

It felt like just what I needed at the end of a busy weekend, which came at the end of a busy seven-week stretch to start a new school year. So I wanted to capture it here for my own reference and for anyone else who might need a Prayer for Peace.