On one of the first Sunday’s in the year the people called Methodist gather for a service known as the ‘Covenant Service’. This is an event which will happen at every Methodist church in the world. For those who take it remotely seriously it is probably the toughest Sunday in the annual calendar. Why? Not because we have to wake up early on a cold frosty morning. We are well used to such things. But because the liturgy of that service contains one simple but very challenging line: ‘Lord God put me to what you will’. It’s a moment of submission in which the people called Christians declare ‘we aint got a clue’ and we are fully reliant on your plans and purposes for our lives.
As churches up and down the country either close or turn into glorified community centers the covenant service offers us a unique opportunity to stop and focus on the presence and authority of God. We are doing what Jesus did when he gathered his followers and in response to a request that he might teach them to pray was heard to say to his Father in heaven, ‘Your kingdom come’.
The more I journey alongside folks through some of life’s best and some of life’s hardest times the more I am mindful that maybe we all need moments in which we can openly declare, ‘I aint got a clue’. Whether in broken relationships or the trap of soulless careers the pressure of holding it all together appears to be taking it’s toll on more and more of us.
What’s really interesting about the Covenant prayer is that it’s not addressed to an equally clueless being it’s a prayer and that means we address our intent to the one we Christians confess to be making all things new. Prayers is our outpouring of oursleves to the divine power at work in the world. In other words it is the moment in which we are aligning ourselves with the one whose way is always infinitely more perfect than ours. That’s why we leave the covenant service hopeful and expectant because we know that where ever we are in life God’s way is always best.
May you also find time and space to align your life with the one whose desire for you is that you might shine like a star. At times that might mean you need to shine in some dark places at others it will mean your light is made invisible by the presence of a far greater light. In all places it will mean you are being as the person God intended for you to be. Why would possibly you want to do anything else?
As churches up and down the country either close or turn into glorified community centers the covenant service offers us a unique opportunity to stop and focus on the presence and authority of God. We are doing what Jesus did when he gathered his followers and in response to a request that he might teach them to pray was heard to say to his Father in heaven, ‘Your kingdom come’.
The more I journey alongside folks through some of life’s best and some of life’s hardest times the more I am mindful that maybe we all need moments in which we can openly declare, ‘I aint got a clue’. Whether in broken relationships or the trap of soulless careers the pressure of holding it all together appears to be taking it’s toll on more and more of us.
What’s really interesting about the Covenant prayer is that it’s not addressed to an equally clueless being it’s a prayer and that means we address our intent to the one we Christians confess to be making all things new. Prayers is our outpouring of oursleves to the divine power at work in the world. In other words it is the moment in which we are aligning ourselves with the one whose way is always infinitely more perfect than ours. That’s why we leave the covenant service hopeful and expectant because we know that where ever we are in life God’s way is always best.
May you also find time and space to align your life with the one whose desire for you is that you might shine like a star. At times that might mean you need to shine in some dark places at others it will mean your light is made invisible by the presence of a far greater light. In all places it will mean you are being as the person God intended for you to be. Why would possibly you want to do anything else?
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