Eagle's Wing Series

[This the second sermon that is based on Reinhold Niebuhr's prayer/poem "The Serenity Prayer." This sermon is about asking God to grant us the courage to change the things that we can.]

Once upon a time, a caterpillar crawled inside a hare’s house when the hare was away and set about making himself comfortable. When the hare returned home, he noticed some strange new tracks on the ground going into his cave. He called out, “Who’s in my house?” The caterpillar boomed: “It is I! Yes, I who crushes rhinos to the earth and tramples elephants into dust.” The hare hopped about crying: “What can a small animal like me do with a creature who crushes rhinos and tramples elephants?”

A jackal soon happened by and the hare asked the jackal to talk to the terrible creature who had taken up residence in his home and convince him to leave. The jackal agreed and barked loudly into the cave: “Who is in the house of my friend the hare?” The caterpillar replied: “It is I! Yes, I who crushes rhinos to the earth and tramples elephants into the dust!” On hearing that, the jackal thought, “Certainly I can do nothing against such a creature,” and he quickly skulked off with his tail between his legs.

The hare then fetched a leopard, a rhinoceros, and even an elephant. All their hearts shrank when they heard the caterpillar’s menacing claim. None of them dared to challenge this fearsome creature with the earth-shaking voice.

A frog, who had been watching all this, went up to the hare and told him that he knew what to do. The frog hopped up to the mouth of the cave and asked who was inside. He received the same reply as had been given to the others. Then the frog went nearer and shouted: “I, who am the strongest of them all, have come at least. I am the one who crushes those who crush the rhinos! I am the one who tramples underfoot those who trample elephants!”

When the caterpillar inside the cave heard this, he trembled. He inched out of the hare’s den along its edge, trying not to be noticed … but the animals that had collected around the hare’s house seized the caterpillar and dragged him out into the open. “What … you?” they all cried in disbelief. “I would never dream of staying in that cave!” said the caterpillar with his nose in the air. “An echo like that is far too crude for a refined creature like myself!” As he sniffed away, all the other animals laughed at the trouble he had given them. (Eugene Loh, “A Slice of Life,” 2006).

God … grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.

God … grant me the courage to change the things I can.

Why did I read it like this? “God … grant me the courage to change the things I can.” Because, to me, it seems like “God” gets swept away or pushed aside for the “I” … “… the things ‘I’ cannot change … the things ‘I’ can change … and it’s important … to me, at least … to remember that it is God who is granting me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change and it is God who is granting me the courage to change the things that I can.

Last week I described how I assumed that God would give me serenity and THEN I could accept the things that I could not change. The reality, in my opinion, is that my level of serenity is directly proportional to my acceptance of the situation. Remember, my serenity is directly proportional to the level of acceptance that I have in my life and inversely proportional to the level of expectation that I have in my life.

We find another interesting paradox in Niebuhr’s prayer when we pray for God to grant us the courage to change the things that we CAN change. Here’s the unspoken part. God will grant me the courage to change the things that I CAN change … if I ask … but He will, in fact, take care of everything else … the things that I cannot change … and the things that I cannot change takes me back to the first verse … the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. Beautiful, eh? I’m human. I can only change so much. Most of the time I’m like that hare hopping around in front of his cave. Fear sets in and I wind up not changing the things that I can change because I don’t try.

The prophet Jonah as like that hare. When God commanded Jonah to go to Nineveh and “cry out against it” (Jonah 1:2), Jonah’s response was to tuck tail and run in the opposite direction. In fact, the Bible says that he tried to “run away” from God. Jonah didn’t believe that God would grant him the courage to do the thing that God was asking him to do, nor did he ask God to grant him the courage either. Fear just took over and he literally ran with it.