Grant me the serenity

Have you ever felt unprepared? I mean for Christ’s second coming? At times I know that, if the sky cracked open and the trumpet sounded for the saints to be called home, I would not be ready. Reinhold Niebuhr was a famous theologian known to most all of us clergy. You perhaps are not familiar with him but you are familiar with his prayer:

God grant me the serenity,

To accept the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can,

And wisdom to know the difference.

The world has adopted this prayer and made it powerless. Here’s the rest of it…

Living one day at a time,

Enjoying one moment at a time,

Accepting hardship as the pathway to peace.

Taking, as He did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it.

Trusting that He will make all things right if I surrender to His will. [there’s the power]

That I may be reasonably happy in this life,

And supremely happy with Him forever in the next. Amen.

We know it as the Serenity Prayer and it conveys an attitude I like very well. On many occasions, I absolutely refuse to accept people I know I have no possibility of changing. On other occasions, I don’t have the courage to root out some sin from my life. Why? Cause I don’t wanna.’ And wisdom? Well, you know very well that’s in short supply. The more I can adopt the attitude of the serenity prayer, the more ready I know I will be for His coming.

But unfortunately, many of us are like the elderly lady who in jest posted on her door in the retirement village the “Senility Prayer”:

God, grant me the senility

To forget the people I’ve never liked,

The good fortune to run into the ones that I do like,

And the eyesight to tell the difference.

Peace,

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