Worthy agents of your peace

Saving God, free us from hardness of heart, take from us all pride and pretension, strip us clean of all that makes us incapable of being witnesses of your gentle love. Make us worthy agents of your peace, so that even as we contend with one another the world may say, 'But see how they love one another.

A Plea for Peace with Chickens

Sovereign of all life, we pray that you will give us the patience to stay still long enough to witness the beauty of your creation. Help us live at peace with your world, especially with our brothers and sisters in and without the church. Help us to live at peace with those creatures not like us-that is, dogs, pigs and even, God help us, chickens. And help us to live in peace with ourselves.

—Stanley Hauerwas, Prayers Plainly Spoken (Downer's Grove: Inter-Varsity Press, 1999)