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Dear Christ Church Friends,
We are all familiar with what is called “the Serenity 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.

Written by Reinhold Niehbur, an American theologian and ethicist, the Serenity Prayer can be found on many greeting cards and wall hangings. But did you know that there is more to the prayer? The prayer ends with these lines:

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.
That I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with Him forever in the next. Amen.

Powerful, isn’t it? We live in a world that once again feels sinful and with daily attacks on our ability to feel safe–whether it be financially, socially, emotionally or physically. Niehbur’s prayer was written as a sort of protest to utopian thinking. Rather than bemoaning that the world wasn’t perfect, Niehbur preached a theology of realism–this is how things are. And a theology of tough hopefulness — accepting hardship as a pathway to peace.

Although we do not need to accept all things as Niehbur did, knowing that we have a God who asks us only to trust and then, from that trust, be willing to forge on, is a comforting thought.

May God grant us all a form of serenity as we await the coming of Christ, to accept those things we cannot change, and to have the will, courage and wisdom to work and fight for those things we can change in the world about us.

Blessings and love,
Rev Rebecca+

Dear Christ Church friends,
Transitions bring to light new needs, as old norms may no longer be useful or needed. As changes surface, they reveal hidden diversities and perspectives. Complexity increases, especially for groups like the Search Committee, whose work is not only to produce as accurate a “snapshot” of the parish as possible, but also to discern the overall viewpoint and desires of the entire gathered community — a tall order! Of course, as the Church, we have an advantage that secular groups do not—the love and care of God, the certainty of belonging through Jesus Christ, and the guidance and wisdom of the Holy Spirit.

In all of perplexity and complexity, our task as God’s people is to slow down and to listen and discern God’s direction.

The following was brought to me by Becky Sheble-Hall of Chaplains on the Way:

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.

We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way to something
unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress
that it is made by passing through
some stages of instability—
and that it may take a long time.

And so I think it is with us;
Our ideas mature gradually—let them grow,
let them shape themselves, without undue haste.
Don’t try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within us will be.
Let us believe that God’s hand is leading us
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

The Rev. Rebecca Black