The Serenity Prayer: the four-line text and who actually wrote it
The 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.
In short
The Serenity Prayer asks for three things: serenity to accept, courage to change, and wisdom to tell one from the other. It is attributed to the theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, the attribution was disputed for decades, and the four-line short form has circulated in newspapers since the 1930s.
- Written by
- Raphael Navarro Schmitt
- Reviewed by
- Maria Luisa Navarro Schmitt
- Published on
- Reading time
- 5 min read
When to pray it
In front of a situation where it is not clear whether to act or to accept — which is the exact moment it was written for. In recovery groups it is said at the opening or the closing of meetings.
The prayer is famous because of its third line. Accepting and changing are opposite postures, and anyone can pick one of them; the hard part is knowing which moment calls for which. By asking for wisdom to know the difference, the text concedes that most suffering comes from applying the right posture to the wrong situation — pushing where nothing can be done, and giving in where something could.
It also promises no outcome. It does not say the situation will change, does not say peace will arrive today, and does not suggest that anyone still struggling has prayed too little. It asks for three internal dispositions, which is exactly what can be asked for about what one does not control.
The order of the requests matters. Serenity comes first, courage second. This is not resignation in disguise: the prayer asks for both in the same sentence and treats the courage to change as equally necessary. Reading the text as an invitation to accept everything is a reading the text itself refuses on its second line.
If what lies behind the prayer is an addiction — alcohol, drugs, gambling, medication — it is worth saying plainly: addiction is treatable, and support groups and health services exist for it. Praying and getting treatment belong to the same day. This page is not a substitute for assessment or care, and no prayer on this site is.
Where this prayer comes from
When it appeared 1930s, attribution disputed
The standard attribution is to Reinhold Niebuhr, the American Protestant theologian who died in 1971. According to the account of his daughter, Elisabeth Sifton, the prayer was written for a service in a chapel in Heath, Massachusetts, in the early 1940s. Niebuhr himself said in his lifetime that he had written it, and admitted honestly that he could not prove it had not been circulating beforehand.
In 2008 the attribution was publicly questioned. Fred Shapiro, editor of the Yale Book of Quotations, searched digitised newspaper databases, found versions of the prayer circulating in the 1930s with no mention of Niebuhr, and concluded that the authorship was doubtful. The following year he published a revision of his own conclusion: new material had surfaced, among it the papers of Winnifred Wygal, a colleague of Niebuhr’s, showing the prayer already credited to him at the start of that decade. The picture now generally accepted is that he wrote it earlier than supposed, and that the text circulated anonymously well before anyone tied it to a name.
What made the prayer universal, though, was not theology. By Alcoholics Anonymous’ own account, a member spotted it printed in a newspaper obituary column in 1941; the group had it printed on cards, and it entered the daily practice of millions of people in recovery, in rooms where those present often share no religion at all.
Little-known details
The investigation that set out to demolish the attribution ended up supporting it
The version in circulation is the shortest one, and it is also the oldest
The prayer is famous outside any church
The idea is far older than the text
What the passages say
5But if anyone among you is in need of wisdom, let him petition God, who gives abundantly to all without reproach, and it shall be given to him.
The text that authorises the prayer’s third petition. Wisdom appears here as something asked for rather than as the residue of experience — and the verse takes care to add that the request is not met with reproach.
14consider that you do not know what will be tomorrow.
15For what is your life? It is a mist that appears for a brief time, and afterwards will vanish away. So what you ought to say is: “If the Lord wills,” or, “If we live,” we will do this or that.
The most direct passage in Scripture about what is not under our control: a year of plans described as mist. The alternative the text proposes is not to stop planning but to change the verb — “if the Lord wills”.
11I am not saying this as if out of need. For I have learned that, in whatever state I am, it is sufficient.
12I know how to be humbled, and I know how to abound. I am prepared for anything, anywhere: either to be full or to be hungry, either to have abundance or to endure scarcity.
13Everything is possible in him who has strengthened me.
Paul describes contentment as something learned, not as temperament. It is the nearest relative of the prayer’s first petition: serenity here is not the absence of adverse circumstance but what is learned inside one.
34Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow; for the future day will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its evil.”
The line that shortens the problem to the size of today. Worth reading alongside the prayer: neither promises that tomorrow will be good, and both propose the same manoeuvre — cutting the horizon down to what can be carried.