I am no longer my own but yours…
Let me be employed for you or laid aside for you,
I love the word covenant. It has so much more to it than promise or commitment. A covenant requires multiple parties to be involved and it requires them all to keep their side of the deal for it to work. So God made a covenant with Abraham and his descendants that if they followed him and kept his laws, he would honour and bless them with “more descendants than there are stars in the sky”.
It was this covenant that was repeated and restated several times in each generation. For example, today we have reached the story of Jacob. Jacob has tricked his father into blessing him and is on the run. He arrives at the place he later calls Bethel (meaning the house of God) and in a dream God says to him:
“I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” Genesis 28:13-15
An amazing promise especially as Jacob’s life has been so full of deceit up to this point. The God of Abraham and Isaac is now the the God of Jacob and the foundations of a nation have been born. The covenant has been taken to the next generation.
Growing up as a Methodist, the word covenant takes on a special meaning for me every New Year. To prepare for the New Year, the Methodist Church has a Covenant Service which sets the coming year in the context of a covenant between us and God. The world encourages us to give up smoking or lose weight as our New Year’s resolutions in our own strength. The Covenant Service sets our whole life in the context of God’s kingdom and our role within it. Talk about seeing the big picture!
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 made on earth,
let it be ratified in heaven.
Amen.
Wow! That is some prayer. It came to mind this week as a friend popped in for a coffee and a chat on Saturday morning. He felt confused about the future. He felt concerned he wasn’t doing what God wanted him to do and that he wanted to achieve more.
I read these words to him and told him some of my own story – times when I so felt I was doing the right thing only to find out that I wasn’t, and God had other plans. Sometimes those plans seemed to be for me to be laid aside or under-utilised in my view. This prayer sets that in context “Let me employed for you or laid aside for you”. Powerful and hard words if you are unemployed or in what you feel is dead-end job.
But that is the nature of Covenant. The covenant prayer is a prayer of unselfishness – you are saying before God and the assembled congregation “It’s not all about me”. And when we do that, we begin to break the bonds. The world says it is all about you. You are worth it. Do what you need to do for YOU.
God says ‘It is about all of us -me, you and the people you are “travelling” with. Follow me, and we can travel on this journey together. Sometimes you will lead. Sometimes you will follow. But travelling together in community is so much better than it all being about YOU.’
So today, read the words of this prayer. Centre yourself on the context of your life with God and suddenly the minor problems and challenges of the day are put in the context of your life. Remember Jesus changed the world with 30 years of waiting for 3 years of fulfilling his purpose.
