The quote hung on my wall as a teen-ager. I would not know much about the author until Seminary days when his name was prominent on reading lists. \u201cGod 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,\u201d so wrote Reinhold Niebuhr in his Serenity Prayer. American theologian, and professor at Union Theological Seminary for more than 30 years, Niebuhr offered me my first motto. Over the years I would learn that there were many more things that I could not change than there were that I could change. I found a fine line between serenity – the state of being calm, peaceful, untroubled and acquiescence – the reluctant acceptance of something without protest. Sometimes I didn\u2019t know which I had experienced until after the fact. Courage was different – the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear. Moses said to Joshua, \u201cBe strong and of good courage, do not fear nor be afraid of them; for the Lord your God, He is the One who goes with you. He will not leave you nor forsake you\u201d (Deut. 31:6). In my early, eager years, I mostly needed serenity. Today, I need courage. The Lord has been ever-present with me in both.<\/p>\n
Join me this week in remembering the following global concerns:
\n\u2022 Pray for Ukraine. A tentative ceasefire continues \u201cofficially\u201d in Ukraine. Many of those displaced by the conflict are trying to return to their homes, while thousands of others continue to live in churches, refugee camps, or other venues that are not \u201chome.\u201d
\n\u2022 Give thanks for over 150 families that were touched through the Wellness Camps conducted by the Canvas Church on Vancouver Island and pray for the task of building the new congregation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The quote hung on my wall as a teen-ager. I would not know much about the author until Seminary days when his name was prominent on reading lists. \u201cGod 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,\u201d…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1453\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}