September 10, 2020
Dear Friends,
The Collect for Sunday goes like this:
O Lord, keep Your Church with Your perpetual mercy; and because of our frailty we cannot but fall, keep us ever by Your help from all things hurtful and lead us to all things profitable to our salvation; through Jesus Christ. . .
One of the gifts of the prayers of the church is that, even while they express our petitions to God, they also teach us.
It’s just like in the Lord’s Prayer. We pray for daily bread to ask God for all that we need to support this body and life. But we also pray, as Luther puts it, so that God “would lead us to receive our daily bread with thanksgiving.”
In Sunday’s collect, we pray that God would keep us from things that are hurtful to our salvation and lead us to those things that are profitable, those things that help us towards our salvation.
It is essential that we ask God for that protection and guidance because we cannot do it on our own, in our frailty. But by asking we are also reminded to be on guard. We are reminded that in this life there is good and evil, things helpful and hurtful to faith, works of the flesh and fruits of the Spirit.
Even as we pray that God would protect and lead us, he uses that reminder to equip and strengthen us to set our minds on things above and not on earthly things.
Pray with confidence, that what you ask in Jesus’ name he will deliver. And pray with open ears, that you may desire and strive after that for which you pray. Keep away from what is hurtful to your salvation, and remain ever near to that which is profitable to your salvation.
God bless and keep you,
Pr. Buchs