Serenity Prayer Part Six

Taking this world as it is...doesn't seem like the sort of prayer we'd pray today.
So often prayer seems to be asking, cajoling, and even challenging God to change what is happening.
Come on, God, there are hungry people in Africa,
People with tears in their eyes in our churches with grief,
Pain that impacts the mind, body, and soul...

This world sometimes seems to be too much for us...which is why we love space exploration.
We love to think of starting over again, somewhere new.
Or we love going to a place where no one knows us with all our faults and foibles,
Where no one knows I am a pastor so they feel free to swear, and drink, and tell jokes.
And besides, aren't we trying to work for God's realm?
Isn't part of the call of Christians to change the world?

But until something is accepted, even in its blessed brokenness,
Until we love something so deeply, we see it for what it is,
Until we sit for a spell with the jagged edges exposed, all our good intentions will, like the children's poem, not be able to put Humpty Dumpty back together agin.
And if the above is true of the world...
How much more for each of us and every person we know?

Christ didn't come to offer six steps to your best life now.
His wisdom is more than self-improvement.
His love is more inclusive than make even make us comfortable.
Take this world as it is...because that is how Christ walked on earth.
Receiving
Perceiving
Steeped in the sacred of the ordinary moment.

To take the world as it is...
Is to live in the moment...
And realize that there is another truth deeper than the brokenness we first see.
There is a grace that calls us home and makes us whole.

Grace and peace...
Healing and Wholeness as we inch closer to Holy Week and keep plotting/planning to encounter the resurrection.