A tiny flickering hope

(I have been sitting on this post for several days now - and it has been edited several times, today we received explicit permission to share this news.)

This year I have not been to a covenant service, as the week it took place at my link church I was away at Queen's, although our Sunday worship included elements of it. We also had the covenant prayer as part of the Pride Church service in January.

Since the first time I heard the covenant prayer, I have felt that it is perhaps the most risky prayer in the worship book. This year it feels harder than usual.

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.

Training for ordained ministry makes this prayer feel incredibly real. My wife , Tiffany (our 🐈) and I are, with Methodist itinerancy, putting ourselves in a position of really living this prayer, and it is a little scary.

In the last week I have been informed that my job is at risk. Obviously I can't and won't go into the details around that, but I can say that many of the lines in the covenant prayer feel a little too on the nose for comfort right now.

If I do end up being made redundant, it will put my ability to keep training for ministry severely at risk.

I know that I'll struggle to find other work for the year and a half I have left before stationing takes place. I've been told I can't transfer to full-time training, and so get a stipend, as I'm too far through and anyway I need to stay living in Leeds to support my wife. So I desperately need a job but I've also had a lot of bad experiences with this happening before and with long periods of unemployment. In addition, due to my disability, job applications are difficult to fill out. The whole process for anyone it is not great, but for me, due to my life experiences, it's traumatic. Some of this is related to rejection sensitivity dysphoria (RSD) which is without a doubt one of the worst aspects of ADHD. The anxiety it is causing has meant that I have not slept for several days.

This experience has caused me to doubt my calling. If this is what God is calling me to then why are there so many barriers to continuing training? I need to continue training part-time for family reasons and I need to earn while doing so as my wife only works part-time due to health conditions. Hope has been difficult this week, and yet hope remains.

I went to church this morning more out of obligation than of a desire to worship. I was intending to go in masking and pretending everything was ok. Apparently I forgot to tell my face ... I couldn't sing, (which may have been a blessing for the people next to me) and praying was a struggle. But God met me where I was; something I've noticed They have a habit of doing. The readings were from Luke 4:14-21 and

1 Corinthians 12:12-27, both of which reaffirmed my sense of calling. But it was a hymn that really broke through. I know very Methodist of me, in fact to compound it, it's a Wesley:

O thou who camest from above. Verse 3 in particular would not let me go.

Jesus, confirm my heart's desire to work, and speak, and think for thee; still let me guard the holy fire, and still stir up thy gift in me

The greatest gift we have as Christians and the greatest gift we can share with the world is the hope we have in Jesus. This morning my hope was barely an ember, this afternoon it is perhaps a tiny flicker of a flame, fragile but alive.