"Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace"

I read that prayer from St. Francis some time in the infancy and newness of my relationship with the Lord, and that opening line, "...make me an instrument" stuck with me immediately. I remember typing it out on some colorful sheet of paper and sticking it in my high school locker alongside pictures of Orlando Bloom and my class schedule. I was obsessed with the loveliness of the idea I could not fathom even one bit - of being an instrument, capable of sowing love, pardon, light, and joy. I prayed it earnestly again and again each time I saw it, without knowing why or what it meant. It hummed in me like an echo during those years of after-school sports and college-applications and homecoming dances. And I thought it was the most beautiful desire I had ever heard - someone longing to be an instrument of peace. I found my heart wanting it also, without realizing it, by praying it without understanding what it was I was even asking. That prayer started turning my innocent, ignorant, empty words into ones with power and meaning - my weak repetition of someone else's hopes began transforming me. Funny, how prayer might be the only medium through which something like that is possible.

I was in church last sunday and we started singing "Come Thou Fount", which is a beautiful hymn, but one I hear so often that I find myself dull to it most days. But not this sunday. Suddenly, that old hum of St. Francis' words started to fill me up. Out of my mouth, I heard myself singing the line, "tune my heart to sing thy praise," and I found that I couldn't go on. I couldn't stop thinking about the powerful implication of what I had just said.

Tune my heart. I am the instrument.

Me. This girl who always says the wrong things or feels the wrong things or falls upstairs or breaks things or gets lost on the highway or snorts when she laughs. Me, whose life certainly must be the strangest cacophony of sound imaginable - I am an instrument, tuned by a perfect God.

And if my heart can already by tuned, I am already the instrument. In my present moment. Not in the circumstances I dream and wish and long myself into, with all the power of my imagination - I am an instrument being utilized and tuned in my present reality. I have been situated to play exactly this note, at exactly this moment. And I don't have to do anything to make myself a member of this kingdom orchestra. By the very nature of my creator, I am already the instrument.

Already.

It's funny - that after all these years of praying to become an instrument, usable by God, with a strange longing I could not place - I have been praying what has been true of me all along. And in those words, I have been and will continue to be tuned until I am singing with perfect beauty and rhythm and pitch.

and so how can I refuse Him praise? How can I fail to shout with joy every day of my existence? Because when I am silent from fear or feelings of sadness and doubt, I am denying the essence of my creation - as someone made for sound and usefulness and beauty.

I am an instrument, tuned by the Lord.

That is such a glorious thing.

I hope I never get over it.