Serenity and Tenacity

David Augsburger has written a book called “Dissident Discipleship,” an Anabaptist view of what it means to walk with Jesus in this world, following the way of Jesus. In his chapter called “The Practice of - Tenacious Serenity,” he begins with the story of Annie Funk on the Titanic, who, having been given a seat on a lifeboat, saw a mom and children left behind on deck. She immediately stood up and traded places.

Serenity is a settled commitment to do the right thing. It avoids crises and consternations, because the decision has already been made. In Annie’s case, she knew the right thing to do, and so the decision was rather simple. A determination to do the right thing, no matter what.

And it’s the “no matter what” that brings in the tenacity. Because sometimes doing the right thing is hard, or costly. It involves sacrifice. But in the “way of Jesus” described in “Dissident Discipleship,” sacrifice is not an exceptional experience for the Christian. It is the normal experience. It takes seriously the very serious phrase in the famous verse, Romans 12:1 - “I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice..” Serenity is not easy, but it’s simple. Tenacity is the willingness to do the hard things, if they are the right things.

One of the gentlemen in my philosopher’s group observed that I was experiencing “misplaced anxiety.” In a sense, what he was detecting was a lack of serenity. He wasn’t seeing a settled commitment. He saw rattled thoughts and emotions. Yes, life is spinning around us. But we can’t control those things. We can be calmly determined to do the right thing, no matter what.

Here are a couple of quotes from Augsburger as he tries to help us understand this counter-cultural concept; this “Jesus” concept:

• It is the willing yieldedness of the stubbornly faithful yet incorrigibly nonconformist radical disciple.

• Serene tenacity is the quality of yielded fortitude, of surrendered steadfastness that stays the course, commits the soul, and relinquishes the self to what is truly good, what is ultimately priced, what is the will of God.

It is not passive, but engaged with God as we seek to walk the way of Jesus, like Jesus, refusing to follow the cues of the world.