Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Genesis chapter 3 verses 22 through 24:
22 Then the Lord God said, ‘See, the man has become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever’— 23therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. 24He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life.
Accepting new, and often hard realities is a necessary part of life. Learning to live east of Eden is a primal demand on the human soul and psyche.
The sure path to psychic and emotional harm is the inability to come to terms with where we are and what we can and cannot do about it. This is the work of being human.
Below is the Serenity Prayer, attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr. Many are familiar with the abbreviated version of this prayer. I offer the full version this morning because I think it has important things to say about learning to live in the world that is, while still hoping in the world that is to come:
God, give me grace to accept with serenity
the things that cannot be changed,
Courage to change the things
which should be changed,
and the Wisdom to distinguish
the one from the other.
Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking, as Jesus did,
This sinful world as it is,
Not as I would have it,
Trusting that You will make all things right,
If I surrender to Your will,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy with You forever in the next.
Amen.
Ryon Price is Senior Pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.
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