Pause for Thought: Try following God’s direction in order to recentre your faith

If I have to find a destination, I will do what most of us do and turn to my navigation app on my mobile and try to follow the little arrow to lead me to where I need to go.

However, I often get confused in the direction it is pointing me towards and I have been known to end up getting totally lost.

Then something comes onto the screen - “Recentre” – so that I can once again get my bearings to know where to go to complete my journey.

With another lockdown hitting us, it feels like we have got lost again in the confusion of a pandemic that we thought we were beating but now seems to be more virulent than ever.

We are all trying to come to terms with how we can continue our lives with severely restricted options and freedom.

I feel like I don’t know which way to turn and what decision to make first.

This is when my faith really helps me because it is like pressing ‘recentre’.

Through prayer and stillness, I am led to see where I am now in order to be able to navigate which direction I need to go and what decisions I need to make next.

At the beginning of the year, the Methodist Church joins in a re-dedication of our faith in God which is called The Covenant Prayer. We choose to recentre our lives on God.

We are reminded of the promise that God’s Truth remains in us and that we can trust him to lead us forwards - even in the most confusing and difficult times.

Part of the prayer says, “wherever you may place me, in all that I do and in all that I may endure… Glorious and blessèd God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, you are mine and I am yours”.

As I recentred my trust in God this year, it was more poignant because of what we are dealing with, but I trust that God will lead us all through.

*Rev Haigh is the Minister of Greenhill Methodist Church in Sheffield. The church has been serving its local community on the southern edge of Sheffield for more than 200 years.