Serenity Prayer

The Serenity Prayer is a common thing found in recovery groups like Alcoholics Anonymous. Its usually said in an abridged form with the first three lines being considered the whole prayer.

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Living one day at a time;
Enjoying one moment at a time;
Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace;
Taking, as He did, this sinful world
as it is, not as I would have it;
Trusting that He will make all things right
if I surrender to His Will;
That I may be reasonably happy in this life
and supremely happy with Him
Forever in the next.
Amen.

--Reinhold Niebuhr

but the truth is the depth comes in the latter half of the prayer. Its seems a lot of people looking into the windows of America's churches from the outside are more prone to recognize the wisdom of taking the world as it is, rather than manipulating it into your vision.

Its not society that often speaks for "how the world ought to be," but pompous Christian leaders who have the audacity to know exactly how God designed the American government, church, and marketplace be. Of course American society challenges Christians on how people could possibly predict the exact vision of God from such a tiny world perspective, because its an inherent human intuition to recognize that the world's shape is not within our hands. Atheists seem to comprehend more aptly than Christians that humans are small and its arrogant to assume a small group of Americans, in a small blip in the time of the earth could possibly shape the world into exactly what "God" wants.

This begs the question, is serenity something even found in American Christianity? Or is the humility to recognize the world is not ours to shape, but simply contribute to something better? Which seems better grasped outside the bubbles ironically created to cast out the secular opposition to "God's" supposed world view?