One of the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, William Griffith Wilson, loved the prayer so much that he gave a copy of it to the members. In 1941, a member of the Alcoholics Anonymous fellowship found it in the obituary section of the New York Herald Tribune and shared it with the rest of the group. With such wisdom and depth packed in its short lines, it’s not surprising that the prayer gained such popularity. Then in 1940, Winnifred Wygal placed a slightly changed version in a book of worship. The prayer first surfaced in newspapers in the 1930s. Niebuhr penned the words in his diary, which was maintained by his student Winnifred Crane Wygal. The words of this prayer were written by Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr, an American theologian and ethicist who lived from 1892-1971.ĭr. Though it is popular in Christianity, the Serenity prayer isn’t written anywhere in the Bible. The first question people usually ask is, “is the serenity prayer in the Bible?” When you can constantly shift your focus to working on the things you can change about an issue, instead of mourning the ones you can’t, that’s serenity. Whatever circumstance you are faced with, differentiating between the two is key to having peace. If you’re having financial difficulties, you also have some level of control over your spending and savings habits. Sometimes, things like doubt and anxiety, and self-pity can cloud our ability to differentiate between the two.įor example, if you have a family member who constantly demeans you, although you can’t control their actions, you can control how you respond. In the current context, it is the ability to discern between the things that we have control over and the ones we don’t. But courage is the ability to make moves regardless of the fears in our hearts. This doesn’t mean that we won’t be faced with fear. We can either feel sorry for ourselves or swing into action to change the things that we have control over. When we are faced with an obstacle, there are two types of approaches we can have towards it. In this prayer, courage is the strength we need to tackle the things that are within our reach. Focusing on the ones that we can do something about is where we need courage. Living with the reality that there are things that we can’t turn around with our actions, helps us develop serenity. The Bible itself tells us that by worrying, we can’t even add a day to our lives, rather we even shorten it. Worrying does nothing but make us more anxious. A lot of people spend a lot of time obsessing and worrying over the things they have no control over. In the context of this prayer, acceptance means letting go of the things we can’t change. It is actually more of a perspective than it is a virtue because it comes from a place of acceptance. But serenity is something that can be developed with God’s help and a lot of practice. Looking at everything going on in the world today, it can sound a bit too good to be true. It is a type of peace that is constant even in the unstable chaos of the world. It isn’t affected by the things that go on around us, good or bad. Serenity is a synonym for peace and tranquility, the opposite of anxiety.
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