A Layne Post

Peace Prayer of Saint Francis

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.

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.

Easter felt a bit different for me this year.

I have friends walking through the hardest days of their lives. My job, my ministry, revolve around people suffering, fighting to live, yet often dying. As I listened to worship songs of death being defeated, I felt a strange sting. It doesn’t feel defeated in the way I want it to. I believe Jesus conquered death and rose from the grave. I do. I also know the hard truth that death is still the required road to eternal life.

As I reflect on the story of the Messiah, I can see myself in the Jews. I, too, expect Jesus to come in all His power and glory to defeat the Romans, the oppressors… my oppressors, sickness, cancer, depression, hardship of any kind, maybe death…

Isn’t that what I was told? Isn’t that what you were told? I was told my whole life of a powerful Redeemer, who gave us the keys to the kingdom, who would deliver me from all my suffering. Ask and you shall receive.

Glory. Power. Dominion. Victory.

And then life.

It is so much harder and messier than I expected. More pain. More suffering. I have struggled to reconcile this Jesus I was taught with the life I am living. The formulas I was sold aren’t working.

The declarations. The faith of a mustard seed. The laying on of hands. The two or more that are gathered. The prayer chains. The begging.

Don’t get me wrong, it is not that these are bad. You’ll often find me rubbing a patient’s leg, whispering prayers and Biblical promises over them, and then face down in my bathroom pleading Jesus to intercede. I’m the first to jump on Facebook and ask for communal prayer.

But people are still dying.

I have known the truth of His presence. That wasn’t in question. He just looks so much different than I expected.

More honestly, He looks different than I want.

Where’s the victory?

What I realized is that this Jesus, who was born in a manger, who chose to live in poverty, who rode on a donkey, who washed the feet of others, who walked the Via Dolorosa, this Jesus, in His unexpected upside-down kind of way, instead of changing the required death-road to eternal life demanded by sin, decided to show us how to walk through suffering.

He showed us how to die.

He said, “Follow me.”

It isn’t that I don’t pray for miracles, or for relief, or for mercy. I do. Sometimes it is granted. I also know that when it doesn’t come, as it didn’t for Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, I am in good company. When the road ahead overwhelms me to the point of death, I have an example to follow.

He might not look like I expected or wanted; He is far more humble, but after some time in His presence, I assure you He is so worth following.