Undistractedly

Reinhold Niebuhr, it is thought, coined a prayer made more famous by Alcoholics Anonymous.  It runs something like this:

Grant to us the serenity to accept that which cannot be changed; courage to change that which can be changed, and wisdom to know the one from the other.

I have been reflecting on the anxious energy I expend on fretting over that which cannot be changed, or at least that over which I have no power to change.  I remember distinctly the roller coaster of anxiety and worry, relief and then more distress we experienced while both my mother and sister-in-law fought with cancer.  It is a fight they both ultimately lost, but in the battle there were moves forward and times where each of them rallied and then took a turn for the worse.

And there was a lot of worry and fretting on my part.  And that worry and fretting is a distraction.  I have no personal power over cancer and the circumstances of their illness.  Healing and miracles are indeed something I prayed for, but that is quite different from fretting over what I could not change.  The stuff I can’t change I need to leave in God’s hands.  Really.

Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, sang a hymn of praise when his son was born and he received his voice back.  You can read the whole thing in Luke 1:68-79.  It is a hymn of praise that God has “visited and redeemed his people.”  Zechariah sees the coming of Jesus as the fulfillment of God’s promise, his “mighty salvation for us.”  And that promise, spoke through the prophets is that we should be “saved from our enemies and from the hand of all that hate us.”

This is yet another example of something over which we have no control, the assault of enemies, especially enemies more powerful than we.  Zechariah praises God that his has fulfilled his promise to save us from our enemies, something which we cannot do.  Fret not, God has this one.

And why does he do this?  It is further on in this hymn of praise:
That we, being delivered out of the hand of our enemies,

Might serve him without fear

In holiness and righteousness before him

All the days of our life.

All those things which we cannot control - but we desperately try to, in our actions and sometimes just in the endless, circular conversations we have in our head - those things distract and impede us from serving him without fear, in holiness and righteousness.  I deeply desire to serve him undistractedly.

In order to do this I need to leave that which is outside my control with God.  In doing that I need to give up my deeply held heresies, and I use the word advisedly, that God does not act and that, if he does, his actions will not be good.  And if you truly do not wonder in your heart about these things, you are a better man than I.

Praise and honor to the Good God who acts, who has raised up a mighty salvation for us.  I yield to your hands all that I cannot control, that I might serve you without fear (in serenity), in holiness and righteousness all my days. Undistractedly.