The Collect
“Almighty God our heavenly Father, renew in us the gifts of your mercy; increase our faith, strengthen our hope, enlighten our understanding, widen our charity, and make us ready to serve you, through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen”
For me, the words of this collect are ones I ought to utter every morning. Because I am always in need of God’s merciful gifts. But when I think about the past year, it’s hard to imagine a Collect that more directly speaks to us in our time--no matter how many ages ago the Collect was written. In a divided world, how tempting it is to ignore those with whom we disagree; but we are called to seek to understand the other. Amid pandemic overload and exhaustion, when we wonder if we have anything left to give to our family, friends, co-workers, we are called to love--no matter the inconvenience, no matter the cost. So thanks be to God for the gifts of faith and hope which enable perseverance and provide perspective. I think of hope as the daily energy that makes possible our attempts to do mercy and seek justice. And I think of faith as the long view of things: God’s got this, I cannot and don’t need to fix everything, I need to play my part. And thus we pray for the renewal of the life-giving gifts not simply for individual solace, but for the purpose of serving God, of advancing God’s agenda for God’s good creation. What joy!