As someone who spent many years in the Methodist expression of Christianity, I have a deep love of the traditional Methodist covenant 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 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.'

A lot of people baulk at the line 'put me to suffering' because they read it with C21 eyes and equate suffering with pain, forgetting that it actually refers to what might be termed 'permitting'.... as in 'suffer little children to come unto me'.  So the prayer is actually along the lines of  'let me do or let me done unto'

For Little Miss Independent (aka me) this is a tough line to mean, though mean it I do.  In the next year or so I am going to have to learn what it means to 'be put to permitting.'  At the moment I am inundated with offers of help and support, so much so I can't take it all in; it is incredibly humbling.  At the same time the slightly crazy (in my view) offers are starting, well intentioned and generous to a fault, but maybe not too well considered.  There's a challenge in this somewhere - to permit people to care for me, to care with me, but not to take me over; to be gracious and generous to those who care so much and to see beyond the expression to the intent.

And so, most gracious God, the covenant made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven....

It is raining in Glasgow this morning.  Tapping at my laptop whilst waiting to take my car literally next door for its MOT I can hear the swish of cars passing by.  Often when it rains I recall a little song we sang in primary school:

Glad that I live am I,

That the sky is blue;

Glad for the country lane

And the fall of dew.

After the sun the rain,

After the rain the sun:

This is the way of life

Till the work is done.

All that we need to do,

Be we low or high,

is to see that we grow

Nearer the sky.

I know nothing more about this song's authorship or origin and I'm too lazy to check right now.  It's clearly Victorian and, like All Things bright and Beautiful seems to accept as part of the divine order a near caste system no longer recognised.

After the sun the rain, after the rain the sun... each is needful in the cycle of life.  We tend to like sun and mutter about rain, but each is essential.  On Sunday evening our thoughts were guided to think of the cycles of life and of our need for pause within the busyness.  Rhythms and routines, predictable and variable... life in its fullness.

As it happens I quite like rain, and once my car has been dropped next door I will walk through it to begin what, for now anyway, is a typical Tuesday.