Week 9 - Day 4 - Living In Serenity.
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Lets begin by reading the Serenity Prayer again.
“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. 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.
In Jesus name. Amen.”
As we continue to unpack the serenity prayer we find ourselves at taking as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it,
Why did the Son of God manifest himself as human in this sinful world? Why would a heavenly being leave paradise for this melting pot of conflict and turmoil we call planet Earth?
Had Adam and Eve not tasted that fruit from the only forbidden tree in the garden, there would have been no conflict, just conversation; no condemnation, just coexistence and harmony. Just love.
Clearly Jesus came to put a spotlight on the chaos and our part in it. To show us the very nature of Himself and therefore His Father. To be a living, tangible, breathing and dying, in the earthly sense, example of a way out of here, to a better place. To Heaven.
He walked and talked among us. He sat with the desperate and broken, the poor and marginalised, the wretched and outcast. He sat with us. Teaching us with His words and by His actions and in so doing, taking this sinful world as it is in a way that demonstrates that we can be at one with and in the world when we separate ourselves from the world. Was this Jesus’ way of saying live and let live?
Surely we have a choice too don’t we? Or are we so addicted to our own opinions and so busy performing to look better than we are that we are fuelling the rage of discontent and disharmony that we spend all our lives complaining and worrying about?
I love Michelle, my wife. She has a beautiful walk with God that is daily blessed by living with the fruits of the Spirit. If a job needs doing, she does it. She rarely complains and when things don’t go to plan she just grins, shrugs her shoulders and says….. “Oh well, you get that.”
Michelle constantly shows me the face of Jesus in her way of dealing with life. Viciously sexual abused as a child, marginalised and chastised when she told the truth about her abuse, and dealing with the half century of pain and dysfunction it caused, surely would have tarnished her right?
No. She never lost sight of God in the seething crowd of judges and condemners in her life. She just takes this sinful world as it is, and gets on with loving me and our family and friends and those she doesn’t understand and gets on with living….for the most part, as Jesus did.
And how does that effect me? Well I am sitting here at 5 am writing this devotional to share with you, people I have never met.
This is so unlike the old me, but I like it and I will take the world as it is. Why? Because what else can we do? Do you have anywhere else to go while you live and breathe?
Simply put, as the line in that movie says. “You either get busy livin’ or get busy dyin’.
Every day the sun comes up and goes down again and we all orbit around it living the best way we know how in the realisation now, I pray, that if something’s not working then we can do what ever we can to fix it as the prayer says.
Questions
- What are you ‘just putting up with’ in life that you can change if you just give it to Jesus?
- Take a minute to think about the world you live in and ask yourself if you really have to remain stuck in your attitude or can you put your picture in a different frame?
- In what ways specific to your life, can the Serenity Prayer be a road map to a life in recovery? Lets face it….we all need recovery from something.
Prayer.
Dear Lord, Papa God.
I just want to thank you for being the stabiliser in my world of turbulence and chaos. Thank you Papa, that You have shown me, through the life of your Son Jesus, that I can see beauty in many ways that I live. Thank you for the reason to understand my earthly existence and the clarity that comes when I just accept what is and get on with it. Strengthen me to stand upright when I must and just be when I must. Help me to discern the good from the bad and live accordingly in Your strength and not mine. In this world of information and counterfeit, help me to look for the good and ignore the garbage. To seek the light and not go mining for evil. Help me to take this sinful world as it is and not as I would have it and in so doing, become another light in a sea of darkness.
For this I ask in the mighty name of Jesus.
Amen.
Graham Hood