sent

Opening prayer: Give us your peace, O Lord, in the midst of our chaos.  Speak your love into the middle of our fear.  Bring your healing to our broken and wounded hearts.  Breathe your Spirit onto and into us, and send us to be your presence in a lost and broken world.  Amen.

Scripture: John 20:19-22

Journal: What does this scene stir up within you?  How has Jesus spoken love into your fear lately?  How has he offered you his peace?  How is he sending you to do that into the lives of others?

Reflection:

into the midst of their fear
jesus came
and stood among them
offering his peace
and sending them
as he was sent
breathing his spirit
into them as they
embarked on their journey

they were now the god-breathed
sent to offer the life and peace
they had received
by the breath of his spirit

and now it is us
we are the presence of Christ
to a broken world
we are to offer
our risen wounds
as sources of healing and life
we are bearers and sharers
of his peace
we are the mouths
through which he breathes
his life-giving spirit

we are sent as he was sent
on the winds of his breath
to speak love into fear

Prayer

Closing Prayer: 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; it is in dying that we are born again to eternal life. ~St. Francis of Assisi