There is a Wesleyan tradition of “Watchnight” services on New Year’s Eve which often took the form of a Covenant Renewal Service. The United Methodist Hymnal offers the following prayer in that tradition:
I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee,
exalted for thee or brought low for thee.
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 thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
let it be ratified in heaven.
Amen.
I’m reprinting the prayer here because a Wikipedia entry on the Wesley Covenant Prayer attributes the same prayer to the 1936 Book of Offices of the British Methodist Church. That entry also states that there is normally a bidding such as
… Christ has many services to be done. Some are easy, others are difficult. Some bring honour, others bring reproach. Some are suitable to our natural inclinations and temporal interests, others are contrary to both… Yet the power to do all these things is given to us in Christ, who strengthens us.
The above phrasing aligns so closely with the service in The United Methodist Book of Worship that I have no doubt of its basic accuracy.
We’re not having a “Watchnight” Covenant Renewal Service, but I would encourage you to reflect on the prayer and the invitation nonetheless. For a New Year’s resolution, one could certainly do worse.
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This Sunday we’ll be using the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols found in the United Methodist Book of Worship. This is a service that tells “the tale of the loving purposes of God from the first days of our sin until the glorious redemption brought us by this holy Child.” It does so through the use of nine scripture lessons and nine carols. We’ll start off with the Hymn Joy to the World and then launch into the service proper. One “carol” will be a special number, When Christmas Comes to Me by Jared Dobbins, Becky Dobbins, Janice Walker, and Travis Walker. The other carols are: Hark the Herald Angels Sing, It Came Upon a Midnight Clear, O Little Town of Bethlehem, The Friendly Beasts, Away in a Manger, The First Noel, Good Christian Friends Rejoice, and Silent Night.
Above is a picture of the church taken about 5 pm today (Christmas Day, 2009). Hopefully all the snow will be successfully removed tomorrow. Jenny and I were very reluctant to cancel Christmas Eve Services last night (all the work had already been done, the only thing that was cancelled was the fun part), but the fact that many other churches canceled services combined with the snow pictured above and the inch of ice we removed from some parts of our driveway this afternoon leads us to believe we did the right thing. We’re moving the three hymns that would have been sung last night to Sunday morning (using them to replace hymns that are less well known) and the children’s program has been rescheduled for the tenth day of Christmas (January 3, 2010).
