Today as part of our summer series of prayers, Princeton University plasma physics researcher Bob Kaita adapts a classic prayer attributed to St. Francis. We hope this series offers a chance for readers to connect with each other and with God, to be encouraged, and to pray together. May we be reminded that the church is connected across time and space in the love of Jesus Christ our Lord. To God be the glory!
A Prayer for Peace from a Christian Scholar
Lord, teach us how to be an instrument of your peace
among our colleagues during the coming year;
where there is discord, let us sow harmony;
where there is injury, comfort and understanding;
where there is doubt, faith in how you called us to our disciplines;
where there is despair, hope in the imperishable rewards you have promised us;
where there is darkness, light through the integrity of our scholarship;
where there is sadness, joy in each day we are given to serve you.
O divine Master, grant that we may not so much seek respect from our students
when we see them again, but to earn their respect for us by how we honor you
to be only heard as to hear,
to present knowledge as to convey understanding,
to be considered wise as to teach wisdom.
For it is in giving of ourselves that we receive the joys of our profession,
it is in the way we teach that we are effective in our teaching,
and it is through our caring that we are witnesses to eternal life through Christ.
Amen.
Bob Kaita, recently retired from the Plasma Physics Laboratory and the Graduate Program of the Department of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University. Bob investigated techniques for heating plasmas to high temperatures, and developed instrumentation for measuring them. He also explored materials that could be used in future fusion reactors. His work is described in nearly four hundred and fifty papers. Bob is a fellow of the American Physics Society, and a recipient of the Kaul Prize for Excellence in Plasma Physics Research and Technology Development. He has supervised the research of many high school, undergraduate, and graduate students, including serving as the thesis advisor to fourteen Princeton doctoral students. Bob is a fellow and past president of the American Scientific Affiliation, and has served as the faculty advisor for the Princeton Graduate Christian Fellowship.