The Book of Revelation describes the prayers of the saints (namely, the people of God) as incense laid upon the golden altar before God’s throne (5:8; 8:3-4).
It is an arresting image of the significance and sacred nature of our prayers. That the sovereign Lord should bid his people to pray is not only a great wonder but also an enormous privilege. Yet in his divine providence he delights in our prayers and yearns for us to pray. For through our prayers God brings about his purposes.
It was not surprising then that Thomas Cranmer entitled his first English liturgy as a book of “Common Prayer”. It was not only “common” in that the words were in the common tongue of the English, but it was also “common” in that the people themselves joined in with the minister in saying their prayers. One of the virtues of Anglican liturgy is the opportunity that the people have in joining in prayer together, rather than merely being an audience for the minister’s prayers alone. Cranmer’s saturation of the text of his liturgy with the teaching of the Bible also contained the response of our prayers to God’s revelatory word. His collects “collected” the themes of the Bible passages for a given Sunday or feast day and expressed them in prayer to God. Keep reading
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