Many people pray the “Serenity Prayer”. You’ve seen it before. It’s the one that reads:
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.
I’m willing to accept that I’m in the small crowd on this, but I had no idea until recently that there is more to the prayer.
It’s the “director’s cut” or the “LP version,” if you will.
The rest of the prayer is, as follows:
Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time.
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace.
Taking, as he did, the 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; that I may be reasonably happy in this life, and supremely happy with Him forever.
As it was recently recommended to me to pray this prayer more, I was pleasantly surprised and happy to see these extra lines as I found them to be very profound and applicable.
Thankfully, I’m not the only one who didn’t know there was so much more to this prayer, but whether we are in the majority or minority, I’d like to take a deeper look at these newly-discovered lines.
One at a time
“One day at a time” and “one moment at a time”.
These are cringe-worthy words for planners and worriers alike.
How can we move forward if we either don’t know what the future holds or haven’t planned it exactly 100 percent?
Living anything one at a time requires a lot of trust. You know, that thing that God wants us to have and have more of.
Obviously, there are some moments in life that need some ahead-of-time thought and planning, as entertaining as I would find a “winging it” wedding to be.
However, what are the moments in life that don’t need future thought and worry?
Pray about it.
Accepting . . . hardships?
Do I have to?
If we want to find peace, we allegedly have to accept hardships.
Wouldn’t it be better to ignore them or get rid of them? I guess not.
Every day, we are going to experience something challenging and unwanted.
How many times do we have 99 good things happen in a day and let the one bad thing ruin it and carry over to the next day?
How often do we ignore all of the blessings we have because things aren’t “perfect” (as we would have it, not our Heavenly Father)?
Those so-called hardships are going to meet us whether we like it or want it, or not.
We don’t have to embrace or enjoy every bad life thing that hits us in the face, but knowing that we can’t avoid all of them is a good first step toward a serenity with God.
Pray about it.
The ‘world as it is’
According to this one, if we do not take the ‘sinful world as it is,’ we are going against Christ Himself.
We all want a better world. Politicians and other leaders alike have centered their lives and careers around this idea.
As much as we hope, pray, and try, we will probably never make the world as good as we want it.
Actually, our idea of a good world is probably totally imperfect and would be laughed at by The Almighty Himself if we were to present it to Him.
We are called to love God and love neighbor and let the world do what it does.
We can’t control the world, but we can control our own actions and, through God’s grace, let Him work on the world with what we offer.
Pray about it.
‘Trust,” ‘surrender,’ and ‘happy’
As long as I live I will be trying to understand what it means to surrender to His will. I would probably need a second lifetime to get good at the actual surrendering thereof.
Perhaps I ought to surrender the idea of surrendering to Him and let Him take care of it.
Heaven is not a place on Earth and it never will be.
The more we strive for Heavenly bliss here, the more we will be let down and disappointed, but we can reach that bliss in the next life.
It’s not an easy task, but we are not alone.
If we surrender it all to Him, He will show us the way.
Easier said than done? Ya. For a lot of us.
“God, grant me the serenity . . .”
Pray about it.
Thank you for reading.
I’m praying for you.