FAITH: Make me a channel of Your peace

There is an old phrase I’ve been particularly drawn to over the past few weeks: “Make me a channel of your peace.” 

To be honest, I have always been struck by the word channel. 

It does not say, “Make me the ‘source’ of peace.” It does not ask us to solve everything, fix everybody, or somehow carry the weight of our broken world on our shoulders. It simply asks that we become a place through which peace can move. 

This is a freeing thought because, if we are paying attention, there is plenty going on in our world right now that can leave us weary. We are divided politically. Families find themselves divided socially. Churches are divided ideologically. Communities that once knew how to disagree and still share a friendship sometimes struggle even to speak to one another without hostility and animosity. 

Anger has become profitable. Outrage keeps us clicking. Fear keeps us watching. It sells, and it keeps the divide rapidly growing. Growing to the point that sometimes, we convince ourselves that the only way to answer a loud world is by becoming louder ourselves. 

But peace asks something different of us. Peace does not mean pretending that everything is fine. It does not mean avoiding difficult conversations or refusing to stand against injustice. Peace is not passivity. Most of the time, peace requests courage. 

It means deciding that even when I disagree with you, I will not surrender your humanity. It means listening long enough to understand someone before mentally preparing the rebuttal. It means refusing to turn neighbors into enemies simply because they vote differently, worship differently, look differently, love differently, or understand the world differently than we do. 

In this prayer, I found myself returning to the natural world: 

Through the wind in the trees, 

the water that flows toward its way home, 

the warmth of the sun, 

and the quiet earth beneath our busy feet— 

make me a channel of your peace. 

There is something about the beauty of the world in its natural state that reminds us how small many of our arguments really are. 

Friends, we breathe the same air. We walk the same earth. We live beneath the same vast blue sky.

And whether we call that which binds us together God, grace, love, humanity, or simply the sacred mystery of being alive, surely we can recognize that we belong to one another. 

Perhaps the spiritual work of our time is not winning the argument. Perhaps, it is learning again how to belong to each other; and that begins in ordinary places. 

It happens when we listen instead of interrupting. When we apologize without attaching an excuse. When we make room for someone who has been pushed aside. When we choose kindness toward the stranger, the coworker, the marginalized, the person across the political aisle, or the family member who has tested every bit of patience we possess. (We all have one) 

Peace usually arrives without a spotlight. It can look like someone deciding not to send the angry text. Someone choosing conversation over gossip. Someone sitting beside the lonely. Someone feeding the hungry. Someone admitting, “I was wrong.” Someone offering grace when retaliation would have been easier. Someone being the first to apologize. 

And perhaps that is how the world changes—not through one great defining moment, but through millions of ordinary people choosing, again and again, to leave the places they inhabit a little gentler than they found them. 

There are days when that feels daunting. There are days when the world's wounds seem too deep and its divisions too entrenched. I feel it, and believe you may, too. On those days, I return to the prayer: 

When peace feels too daunting for me to create, remind me in grace that I do not have to create it all. 

None of us has to manufacture enough peace for the whole world. We only have to make room for it to pass through us. May our words bring life. May our hands be useful. May our presence make room for peace. And in a world that desperately needs it, may each of us find the courage to pray: Make me a channel of your peace.

Adam Johnson is a strategy consultant and ordained minister with two decades of experience in nonprofit leadership nationwide, currently the CEO of Habitat for Humanity of Jackson TN. He holds advanced degrees in nonprofit organization from the University of Memphis. Adam lives in Jackson with his wife, Kayla, and their daughter Josephine.