Piloting Faith: A story of war and peace...

A Word for the Day...

In St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin, Ireland is an old door from 1492 with a rectangular hole cut in the middle. As the story goes, two feuding families, the Butlers of Ormonde and the Fitzgeralds of Kildare, battled against one another. Sensing defeat on the battlefield, the Butler family retreated to the Cathedral for safety. The Fitzgeralds followed in pursuit, but instead of continuing the fighting, they proposed a truce. They promised the Butler family safe passage out of Dublin, but the Butler family refused, fearing it was a trap.

As a good faith gesture, George Fitzgerald, the head of the Fitzgerald family, order for a hole to be cut into the door. He put his arm through it, offering peace. Convinced of his sincerity, the Butlers took his hand. The fighting stopped. This became the origin of the phrase “chance your arm.”

Imagine how our world would be different if we cut holes through the walls that separate us. What if our salvation, the way we break through the endless conflict and relentless fear, was by "chancing our arms" for each other. Of all that I know about God, I am certain of this: we are better, kinder, more compassionate when we take the risk for peace.

- Rev. Cameron Trimble, author of Piloting Church: Helping Your Congregation Take Flight

Prayer for the Week

Gracious God,

You have said that the meek are blessed, that those who choose to serve others for no personal gain will inherit the earth.

But how can this be? Show us how. In our world, the meek get ignored. The humble end up trampled and left for dead.

Yet meekness is what you modeled. Show us how to live with faith and confidence in your upside-down kin-dom. Change our imagination, rearrange our priorities, re-create our very way of seeing. Otherwise, pride and power make so much more sense.

Show us the giant promise of your "little" ways. Help us to desire humility, honor it in others, choose it for ourselves, that we may look more like you in this world.

Amen.

- (adapted from The Prayer Wheel by Patton Dodd, Jana Riess and David Van Biema)