Easter 2 - Thursday - The Serenity Prayer

Text: John 15:12-27 (see below)

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

the Courage to change the things I can,

and the wisdom to know the difference. AMEN.

This prayer has become a cherished friend in my daily spiritual life. Every Wednesday evening, a group of anonymous individuals recite the prayer to begin our meeting. At the close of the hour, we stand, hold hands in a circle and close with those words: “God, grant me the serenity….” Powerful testimony to the One who holds each one of us in the palm of His hand.

The Serenity Prayer is attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr who was an American theologian and commentator on public affairs. “Starting as a leftist minister in the 1920s indebted to theological liberalism, Niebuhr shifted to the new Neo-Orthodox theology in the 1930s, explaining how the sin of pride created evil in the world. He attacked utopianism as ineffectual for dealing with reality, writing in The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness (1944):

‘Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible; but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.’

“His realism deepened after 1945 and led him to support United States' efforts to confront Soviet communism around the world. A powerful speaker, he was one of the most influential religious leaders of the 1940s and 1950s in American public affairs. Niebuhr battled with the religious liberals over what he called their naïve views of sin and the optimism of the Social Gospel, and battled with the religious conservatives over what he viewed as their naïve view of Scripture and their narrow definition of ‘true religion’” (Wikipedia).

Niebuhr’s famous prayer took form in 1943 with its inclusion in a sermon. Niebuhr himself did not publish the Serenity Prayer until 1951, in one of his magazine columns, although it had previously appeared under his name. “Niebuhr was quoted in the January, 1950 Grapevine as saying the prayer ‘may have been spooking around for years, even centuries, but I don't think so. I honestly do believe that I wrote it myself.’ The original that is attributed to Niebuhr translated into English is:

“God, give us grace to accept with serenity

the things that cannot be changed,

Courage to change the things

which should be changed,

and the Wisdom to distinguish

the one from the other.

“Living one day at a time,

Enjoying one moment at a time,

Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,

Taking, as Jesus did,

This sinful world as it is,

Not as I would have it,

Trusting that You will make all things right,

If I surrender to Your will,

So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,

And supremely happy with You forever in the next.

Amen” (Wikipedia).

Next to the Lord’s Prayers, the Jesus Prayer and perhaps even the Roman Catholic Rosary, this prayer offered to the world by a faithful Christian has probably moved and shaped the hearts of more people than any other. Today, may you accept those things in your life that cannot be changed; may you be granted the courage to change those things in your life that you can; and may God grant you wisdom, just for today, to know the difference.

Love One Another – Brian

John 15:12-27

Jesus said: ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant* does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another. ‘If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you. If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world—therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, “Servants are not greater than their master.” If they persecuted me, they will persecute you; if they kept my word, they will keep yours also. But they will do all these things to you on account of my name, because they do not know him who sent me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have sin; but now they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me hates my Father also. If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they would not have sin. But now they have seen and hated both me and my Father. It was to fulfill the word that is written in their law, “They hated me without a cause. When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning.”