(Yes, it's Sunday's prompt on Monday since there was no prompt for today and yesterday I wrote about Advent and the Heidelberg Catechism.)
Make a wish; say a prayer; commit yourself to something big. If I could have anything I wanted, what might it be? What do I want that's big enough, weighty enough, to make it to that shortest of all lists? On the flip side, what is personal enough to make it to that list as my wish and not simply the grand but generic wish for world peace or the end of world hunger?
There are so many friends for whom I pray for healing; which one would I pick? It would have been an easy choice while Shirlee was battling the cancer that finally took her, but maybe not. If one were healed, what about the other one or the next one?
I keep circling back to the prayer of Saint Francis with which I begin every day, "Lord, make me an instrument of your peace." It certainly is big enough and personal enough. It is my life prayer, the end toward which I incline my mind, my heart, my will.
One could do a lot worse.
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, let me 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.
Saint Francis of Assisi