1st January 2024

New year! Do you make New Year Resolutions? Many of us do. Some of us make the same ones each year about more exercise and losing weight etc and break them rather quickly.

Many Methodist churches hold a Covenant Service at New Year. It includes the following prayer:

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 by 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.

This is a much more serious matter than resolving to be nicer to …… (you fill in!)

It is a beautiful prayer grasping the promise that if we put ourselves in God’s Hand then God is with us, no matter what.

So onwards into 2024 and God goes with us.

Margaret Clements