This week’s comic is an animated New Year’s special!  Please click this link to watch it on YouTube!

Happy New? Year!   It has been a long two years of pandemic tide, with no real end in sight.  Churches have closed, reopened, and closed again.  Many churches are not going to survive.  Predictions are that all of us will at most only see a 40% return to in-person worship attendance.  And there is no “return to normal,” we will have to pave a new way with a new vision for what community looks like in a Covid world.

In 1755, John Wesley began holding a covenant renewal service as part of a Watch Night, a late-night, sometimes all-night prayer service.  I had the honor in 2019 to partner with United Methodist Communications to to create twelve one-minute animated shorts featuring the Wesley Bros to help educate folks about Methodist heritage and practice.  Today, I’d like to share the Watch Night episode with you.

I’ve been crazy busy with the holidays both at work and personally, so thank you for your patience as I have taken the last two weeks off from creating new comics.  You’ll be getting a new comic next week!  For now, I leave you with the Wesley Covenant Prayer.  May it inspire you as you enter a new year with new challenges, new blessings, and ever-new opportunities to love God and neighbor.

“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 by 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.”