Covenant Prayer (pt1.)

Happy 2013.

(2013 is so hard to type I keep having to correct it from 2012)

I could make the usual promises to blog at least once a month or even once a week, but as these never last maybe not. However, my boyfriend keeps saying that I haven't written lately so I'm sure his prompting will help me blog more regularly. 

However this weekend is the first weekend in 2013, and that means that for many in the Methodist Church they will be juggling Epiphany and the Covenant service. 

Its wasn't until the year before Cliff that the Covenant service became such an important thing for me. It was there that the Covenant prayer became very real in conversation with a member of the Salvation Army. That night was a huge night in my life because of the life changing decisions, a story I've only ever told in person and never written here, its one of them days where God starts to join the dots, and even now as I think back I only just start to see how clearly that day was a life changing day. 

So the Covenant Prayer means even more to me now than it did then. Its been used it many situations and different places to add to its meaning, and each time I read it, or say it, or think upon it something new always comes out of it. 

So today I'm thinking on the lines: 

I am no longer my own but yours. 

Your will, not mine, be done in all things, 

wherever you may place me, 

in all that I do, 

and in all that I may endure;

Methodist Worship Book p.288

I love the reminder that I am no longer the most important thing in my life, that this life has been paid for by someone else life, it is something I often forget and with that fact I often forget that its not my decision it God. In everything in my life I need to be searching and preparing and carrying out God's will. Today I'm hosting an event that I feel that no one will turn up to, faithfully I have bought 14 Jacket Potatoes, I accept that God may mean me to eat a lot of Jacket Potatoes in the next week but faithfully I see this as his will, even if it looks like this event will fail. As for where God places me, I love where I'm living its truly beautiful, but when I had to leave home, or rather a second or third home which was very comfortable and very safe I wasn't so sure. I love Wales and I love my job and the people here, but it's lonely. I rejoice often about that fact that I don't have to share my flat (and consequently my mess my bizarre eating hours and even crazier showering times) with anyone else. That I can be alone after I've finished at work and relax in peace, but having lived in a community for three years, a sort of community over the summer and my family before that I'm discovering that I often miss the things that annoyed me when I lived with them. I miss being able to just chat to someone about the weather or take a walk with someone - conversation with myself is just not as thrilling. But God has called me here, I'm not alone, just lonely. I have my computer music on shuffle and the song You won't relent keeps playing and theres a line 'I don't want to talk about you like your not in the room.' The almighty is here I know that and I need to find joy in his presence not as part of a community but by myself this 2013. 

I have one sure thing in all this. I am (trying to anyway) following God's will, in which there is only one outcome, I will endure and all for his victory.