Last week I wrote about our visit to spend a day with family, and about the jigsaw we did together. Yesterday morning the news was full of the fact that Dippy the dinosaur, the skeleton of a diplodocus which has been on display at the Natural History Museum for the last 120 years, is to be dismantled and taken on tour around the country.
The rather bemused reporter on television asked how on earth you dismantle a dinosaur skeleton? My husband was quick to answer,”That’s easy – piece by piece!”
A friend commented to me recently that she rarely makes New Year’s resolutions. Instead she increasingly finds that attempting to make the best of each day is challenge enough! One day at a time. Piece by piece.
This month many of us who worship in the Methodist tradition will pray a covenant prayer. Many other church traditions now use the prayer, too. There are various permutations of wording, but for me the bottom line is that this is one of the most important services of our church year, as we commit ourselves to God and to serving him, whether by doing or by being. We commit ourselves individually but also as members of a community of followers of Christ.
One variation of the prayer, which we will use in our church here in Halberton this weekend, is worded as follows:
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;
when there is work for me and when there is none;
when I am troubled and when I am at peace.
Your will be done when I am valued and when I am disregarded;
when I find fulfilment and when it is lacking;
when I have all things, and when I have nothing.
I willingly offer all I have and am to serve you, as and where you choose.
Glorious and blessèd God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, you are mine and I am yours.
May it be so for ever.
Let this covenant now made on earth be fulfilled in heaven. Amen.
I can only manage the enormity of the commitment of this prayer like a jigsaw, or like dismantling a dinosaur skeleton – piece by piece, day by day, and in the knowledge that God walks with me through each moment of each day.
