Our February 2019 newsletter is now available – please click here to download the PDF.
Minister’s Message
At the time of writing we are still only a few weeks into 2019—though Christmas seems like a distant memory, and our New Years resolutions may have already receded far into our collective rear-view mirror!
The fleeting nature of some of life’s most special experiences—and the apparent difficulty in sticking to important decisions we try to make to improve our lives—makes me ever grateful for the discipline of the Methodist Covenant Prayer, which some of us will have prayed during January. It is good to begin a new year considering once more what really matters in life, what we want to give our life to, and to choose again to give ourselves once more to the journey of following Christ.
For me, I also find it really helpful to continue to reflect on the Covenant Prayer as the year progresses:
“I am no longer my own, but yours.
Put me to what you will, rank me with whom you will; put me to doing, put me to suffering;
let me be employed for you or laid aside for you, exalted for you or brought low for you;
let me be full, let me be empty; let me have all things, let me have nothing;
I freely and heartily yield all things to your pleasure and disposal.
It is not simply a one-off prayer to be prayed and forgotten, but a posture we adopt in relationship to God—and so to reflect on it month-by-month as we journey through 2019 could be something some or all of us find helpful.
I have one friend who has a part of this prayer tattooed on his arms, a daily and constant reminder of his faithfulness and trust in God. Of course—I’m not suggesting that we all go out and get tattoos (although maybe we’d get a group discount if the whole church went?!) but I do think there is something in his attitude which is to be emulated.
And so as we push on into this new year, with all its challenges and opportunities, it seems vital that we continue to carve out spaces for encountering God: the times and places where we can reflect on what it means to live our lives for Jesus; to ask what God might be calling us to, day by day, week by week and onwards through the year—and who knows where we’ll be by this time next year? But, when we get there, it will be good to know we have trusted it to God.
Simon