Ronnie McBrayer

The Serenity Prayer, Part 9

In this conclusion to Ronnie's 9-Part series on The Serenity Prayer, the last word is happiness. "So that I may be reasonably happy in this life and supremely happy with him forever and ever in the next:" Is the last line of the prayer. And this prayer shows us this way, if we are willing to surrender our wills to that Power greater than ourselves.

The Serenity Prayer, Part 8

"I really thought I had come up with something a few years ago. But it wasn’t me. It wasn’t John Lennon either, no matter what you read on the Internet. It was Brazilian writer and journalist Fernando Sabino: 'Everything will be okay in the end; and if it’s not okay, then it’s not the end.'
"This is my faith. This is my hope. This is what keeps me going, keeps me believing, keeps me looking toward the future. This is why I continue to follow Jesus - best I can and fail as I do. Because: 'God, who gives all grace, will make everything right.' In the words of the Serenity Prayer: 'He will make all things right if I surrender to his will…'"

The Serenity Prayer, Part 7

Here is the world as it is: There are those tortured by evil and injustice; there are those desperate for help and answers; there are those without the will or ability to be a part of any solution; and there are those who callously point their fingers, write the suffering and desperate masses off, and go on their way. It may not be the world I would have created, but we have no other choice but to "take as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it.”

The Serenity Prayer, Part 6

Part 6: "...Accepting hardship as the pathway to peace..." 
If I could take you back to the moment you first drew air into your lungs; if I could take you back to the swaddled little baby that you were and reveal to you all that was going to happen to you over the decades to come, you would have cried - cried that you had been born - and cried to return to the warmth and safety of the womb. 
But those who live well: Those are the people who learned long ago that hard times are bound to come, and nothing is gained by resisting those hard times, trying to reverse them, avoid them, fix them, or undo them. All that can be done is accept such hardships. All you can do is to become a good steward of your particular suffering. Take responsibility for your own attitude and actions in your given circumstances. Don’t resist the lessons that life will teach you.

The Serenity Prayer, Part 5

The Serenity Prayer, Part 5: "'God, 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.' But the prayer continues. The next line: 'Living one day at a time; enjoying one moment at a time.' There is acceptance - you can’t change some things. There is courage - you must change the things you can. There is wisdom - to walk the middle path between the impossible and possible. And the next ingredient added to the recipe for serenity: Live one day at a time. Live in the moment. This tiniest fraction of an inch: It’s all any of us really have."

The Serenity Prayer, Part 4

Part 4 of Ronnie's series on The Serenity Prayer: "God grant me wisdom." Ronnie says, "Optimism is a false hope. Pessimism is as suicide pact. Idealism is a fool’s errand - as a recovering idealist, it pains me to say that. This world can only be navigated by realists; realists who feel the strain, experience the tension of keeping balance, and beg God for wisdom." 

The Serenity Prayer, Part 3

In this third installment of Ronnie's current series, he picks up the theme of courage: "Having the courage to change the things we can." Ronnie says, "We all have internal insecurities, negative voices that shout out from the basement of our hearts to keep us afraid. We all have challenges that seem insurmountable - impossible to overcome. And our fears won't go away. They must be faced, for courage isn’t a feeling. Courage is action. Courage isn’t big talk and bravado. Courage is doing. Courage isn’t having nothing to be afraid of. Courage is being afraid, but trying anyway."

The Serenity Prayer, Part 2

"Oh, God, grant me there serenity to accept the things I cannot change." And by acceptance, what is meant? It means you cannot deny reality. You cannot successfully resist the facts of your situation. Take people and things as they are. The longer you resist reality, frankly, the more desperate you will become. The longer you struggle and fight against what cannot be overcome or modified, the more unhealthy you will become. The longer you deny the facts of your situation, or try to control what is beyond your reach, the more insane you will begin to feel.
The only way to regain composure; the only way to regain your health; the only way to return to sanity is radical acceptance. It is this acceptance of all those things, people, situations, and expectation that we cannot change, control, manage, amend or make the way we would have them that leads to what Reinhold Niebuhr called, “serenity.” 

The Serenity Prayer, Part 1: Introduction

Reinhold Niebuhr, a legendary ethicist and theologian from the previous century, may have produced the greatest single slice of spirituality in the history of North America when he penned a profound prayer in 1932. That prayer begins: "God, 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.”
This is the first talk in series of taking the full Serenity Prayer line by line:  To celebrate it, be shaped by it, and learn how to live lives of strength and peace in a mad, mad world that cannot - that never could - and never will - provide us those things. 

"Why Can't I Be Baptized?"

"Why would someone wish or ask to be baptized in the first place? Well, that depends upon who you ask. And then, of course, there is the question of how we baptize properly? Do we pour, sprinkle, immerse, dip, spray, squirt, squeegee, soak or flush? Again, it depends upon who you ask. Modes and means of baptism are as diverse as Christianity itself. But we can’t ignore the fact that it is an essential part of our faith."