This prayer is commonly known as the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi. We are going to look at the first sentence. It states, “Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred let me show love.” Rather a tall order, isn’t it? It is very hard to walk away from a confrontation with someone who might be hurling expletives at you. It’s also difficult to hold your tongue and not make the situation any worse than it already is.
As alcoholic/addicts we have learned to react rather than respond to situations and people. In looking back, we can see how our outbursts of anger and hatred have caused great harm to others and great trouble for us. It has caused some of our relationships to be beyond repair. We would fight to have the last word. Our point of view had to be the only right one. As a consequence of all this we tended to butt heads quite often with others. Sometimes they ended up hurting us more than we hurt them either physically, emotionally or mentally. Walking away with our tail between our legs is not something that alcoholics do gracefully.
The solution is to not get ourselves put in these kinds of adversarial situations. We need to learn to respond and not react in the blink of an eye. In the political and social states, we find in our world today, spreading a little love could go a long way. Random acts of violence seem to be proliferating. One tends to be looking over their shoulder at the mall, game, church, school or work. And rightfully so. These things do happen. We don’t need to be paranoid but to be vigilant in observing our surroundings. Spreading peace and harmony might just deter some troubled soul from acting out on their violent thoughts. When going out these days I believe that being vigilant is the key. Guns and negative rhetoric are just not doing anyone any good. If we could all just get along for five minutes that would be an awesome start.
So, learn to help you fellow humans. We are not all bad and out to get you. They say faith without works is dead so let’s really try to spread some love and goodwill to others on this journey with us.