A deep breath and a covenant prayer.

 

It’s 9pm on the 31^st of December and rarely have I felt so uncertain about the coming year.   There seem way more instability than usual in our national and international systems and given the record of early 2020 and 2021 all bets are off that there’s not something else coming down the track.  Or perhaps October 7^th was that and it just came early.  Or maybe it is the metastatic fall out from that day which will dominate early 2024.   Tonight I’m at the top of a big wave,  hovering there waiting, feeling rarely more alive just as the pre-reptilian bit of my brain flashes all the danger signals.  A deep  breath.

And yet I am reminded of the prayer I led my church in this morning, written in the mid eighteenth century by John Wesley and since become an integral part of the Methodist Community’s life.

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 wholeheartedly yield all things
to your pleasure and disposal.
And now, glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
you are mine and I am yours. So be it.
And the covenant now made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven.

Such a prayer can do very little about the circumstances of Gaza, Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan, economic growth, migrants, elections, culture wars, poverty, loneliness and so on and on.   What it does offer as we go into the stormy seas of 2024 is an engine in the ship that is my life, the one piece of this world that I can actually do something about.  A ship can survive almost any storm so long as its’ engine is functioning and it can head into the waves, maintaining a small measure of control of direction and response and, God willing, a water tight bulkhead that allows me to stay afloat.   This prayer of surrender to the purposes of God, sets aside my agenda and plans and puts myself at the disposal of God’s tender mercies.   Which hopefully will make a difference also in the community we live in.

I heard an interview this morning with a Jewish man and a Palestinian man who had founded ‘Combatants for Peace’.   From their experience of warfare they know that violence cannot bring solutions.  They acknowledge that they are on the sidelines of their communities right now.   However they  have given themselves over to the bigger truth that ultimately being on the right side of history means holding the ship of hope steady and keeping our moral compass fixed on the eternal stars that cannot be seen through the raging storm.  On God’s tender mercies.

Such people give me hope.