“Above all, add to the rest (for it is not labour lost) that old unfashionable medicine, prayer.” -John Wesley
The prayer that Wesley would have heard this past week in church is called the “Collect for the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity.” It’s a powerful prayer that is still in use today. For those not familiar with the term, a “collect” is a corporate prayer, one meant to be used in worship that brings together the intentions of the faithful. Each Sunday of the church year has a collect unique to it.
The collect for this past week, which can be found in the original 1549 prayer book compiled by Archbishop Cranmer, reads:
Almighty and everlasting God, who art always more ready to hear than we to pray, and art wont to give more than either we desire, or deserve: Pour down upon us the abundance of thy mercy; forgiving us those things whereof our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask, but through the merits and mediation of…