The Heart’s Final Draft: A Prayer for Grace and a Call to Peace

By The Living Breathing James Brown

“Lord, please forgive me for not being a better Christian.”

I whispered these words into the quiet air recently, and the weight of them felt heavier than any book I have ever written. I am The Living Breathing James Brown. I am an author who has spent a lifetime putting words on paper, trying to capture the human experience. I am 71 years old. And recently, I found myself in a place that strips away all pretense and leaves a man with nothing but his naked soul: a hospital bed.

The doctors told me I had indications of a past heart attack. Somewhere in the rush of living, the stress of the years, or perhaps in the silence of the night, my heart had stumbled. It was a sobering realization. When you are told that your heart has already borne a trauma you didn’t even realize happened, you stop looking at the calendar and start looking at your conscience. You stop worrying about the next chapter of your book and start worrying about the final chapter of your life.

That simple prayer—asking for forgiveness for not being better—is not an admission of defeat. It is the beginning of truth.

The Myth of Perfection

Too often, the world views a “good Christian” as someone who is flawless—someone who follows a checklist of rules, attends service, and speaks in sanitized platitudes. But lying in that hospital bed, looking back over seven decades, I realized that living as a Christian is not about pretending to be perfect. It is about admitting that we are broken.

To be a Christian is to acknowledge that we are incapable of saving ourselves.¹ It is to look at the standard of love that Jesus set—a love that washes the feet of betrayers, a love that forgives executioners while hanging on a cross—and to admit, “I cannot do this alone.”

We fail. We lose our tempers. We hold grudges. We turn a blind eye to the suffering of others because it is inconvenient. My prayer was a confession that despite my age and my experience, I still have work to do. I have not always been the man I wanted to be. But the beauty of this faith is that it does not demand we be perfect before we approach God; it only asks that we be humble.

A World in Need of Gentle Hearts

If we truly understood what it meant to live as Christians, the world would look drastically different. The violence that plagues our streets and the wars that tear apart nations are born from a lack of this spiritual humility. Violence comes from pride. It comes from the belief that my way is the only way, that my anger is justified, and that my enemy deserves no mercy.

If we lived by the Spirit—if we truly sought the Lord’s help in taming our tongues and our tempers—there would be less violence. There would be more positive things taking place in our communities. A Christian life is meant to be a barrier against chaos. It is supposed to be the hand that feeds the hungry, not the fist that strikes the weak. It is supposed to be the voice that calms the storm, not the shout that adds to the noise.

We cannot legislate peace into the human heart. Peace must be invited in. It must be prayed for.

The Challenge to the Reader

So, I ask you now, regardless of where you are in your life: Can you be better?

I do not ask if you can be richer, or more famous, or more successful. I ask if you can be better. Can you forgive the person who wronged you years ago, just as you hope to be forgiven? Can you swallow your pride during an argument to save a relationship? Can you look at a stranger not with suspicion, but with the eyes of a neighbor?

We are all walking around with hearts that are fragile. Some of us, like me, bear the physical scars of past attacks. Others bear emotional scars that no doctor can see. But we are all running out of time. My last day can come on any day.

I am 71. I have seen the fragility of life up close. I am asking the Lord to help me use whatever time I have left to be a vessel of peace rather than conflict. I am asking for the strength to be kind when I want to be sharp, and to be generous when I want to be selfish.

Look in the mirror today. Ask yourself if you are contributing to the noise and violence of this world, or if you are contributing to its healing. With the Lord’s help, we can be better than we are. And if we are better, the world becomes brighter.

Let us not wait for a hospital bed to humble us. Let us choose humility now, and in doing so, let us change the world one heart at a time.

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I believe in the very real existence of GOD and JESUS and the HOLY SPIRIT.