i-Llan: connecting faith, life and scripture
Thoughts about life, faith and scripture, often prompted by the Bible readings set for the Sunday but taking a ‘sideways look’ that you might not get in a church sermon.
Why i-Llan? Well, I am based in Wales and a Llan is the enclosure where a group of Welsh Christians would gather in community, living and worshipping together. And i- for the virtual community of the internet.
i-Llan: connecting faith, life and scripture
i-Llan: 9th February 2025 – an traditional prayer for help in troubled times
A reflection on a prayer attributed to Martin Luther
O God, you know us to be set in the midst of so many and great dangers,
that by reason of the frailty of our nature we cannot always stand upright:
grant to us such strength and protection as may
support us in all dangers and carry us through all temptations;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord. Amen.
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Welcome to i-Llan, a podcast connecting faith, life and scripture. In this episode I'm looking at a traditional prayer for help in times of trouble.
How are you feeling about life at the moment? More than one person has told me how worried they are about the state of the world. It all seems chaotic and overwhelming.
So this week’s collect prayer seems appropriate as it expresses that sense of being helpless in the face of unfriendly powers:
O God, you know us to be set in the midst of so many and great dangers,
that by reason of the frailty of our nature we cannot always stand upright:
grant to us such strength and protection as may
support us in all dangers and carry us through all temptations;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord. Amen.
It’s one of the traditional collection of prayers (hence ‘collect’) used in the church for several hundred years. I’ve seen it attributed to Martin Luther, who lived 1483-1546, so it’s nearly 500 years old—which shows that feeling ‘set in the midst of so many and great dangers’ is nothing new!
In trying to cope with life, we receive a multitude of messages encouraging us to find our own strength and resilience—and, often, we are stronger than we think while the help we look for is not there. But it’s also common to feel fragile, frail, weak, impotent, weary of the constant struggle to stay positive in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds. Perhaps you, like so many, know only too well ‘that by reason of the frailty of our nature we cannot always stand upright’.
This prayer turns to God for help, not to give up and leave it to God to sort things out, but asking to be given ‘such strength and protection as may support us in all dangers and carry us through all temptations’. As is customary, it’s prayed ‘through Jesus Christ’ who promised that prayer in his name is answered.
I believe that God can and does work through the most difficult and ungodly circumstances. I also believe that he calls us to work with him and gives us the resources we need to carry out our particular task.
No-one need be alone in this. In our private prayers, we are free to use whatever language is natural to us; it doesn’t have to be beautiful words in elegant phrases. God hears a despairing cry, an anguished whisper, a garbled plea. But the gift of a written prayer such as this is twofold. It gives us the words we need when we lack them for ourselves. And, in praying it, we join ourselves with all who have prayed it in the past and are praying it in the present.
So, will you join me in praying this prayer, both for personal help and for the good of our world?
O God, you know us to be set in the midst of so many and great dangers,
that by reason of the frailty of our nature we cannot always stand upright:
grant to us such strength and protection as may
support us in all dangers and carry us through all temptations;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord. Amen.