My favorite collect ever...

There, now how many bloggers can you find out there who not only have a favorite collect, but are willing to admit it in public?

My favorite collect ever is for today, Thursday of the First Week of Advent:

Father,
we need your help.
Free us from sin and bring us to life.
Support us by your power.
Grant this through our Lord Jesus Christ, etc...

What I most like about this one is the simplicity of it, and I remember it mainly because my shorter morning and evening prayer only used the prayers from the first week of Advent for all four weeks. If Advent is a time for getting back in touch with the need to wait for the kingdom, and to call out, even lament, the fact that the heavens need to be rent once more, then this captures it pretty well. In a time when war is raging, where my own church seems intent on making me run away from it, when life is difficult for friends and colleagues, when the cold is setting in and the leaves are beginning to rot away, this prayer is, for me at least, a great way of bringing that longing, that sense of shriveling in a world that seems not to have been changed by Christ, directly into my prayer. And, like all good liturgical prayers, my personal sin and my personal need for help are not considered in isolation, but as part of the "we" who need God's help, the "we" who struggle with sin, the "we" who have tasted the beginnings of new life but haven't sat down at the banquet table yet.