This is published over here, at my husband's suggestion. Here's the unedited 'original' with photos. Enjoy.
Because people like me do actually pray, often with some fervour, about the bodily functions of children for whom they are responsible. That's right. We pray about the absence, presence, frequency, infrequency, texture, colour and quantity of poo. Mostly because such things can flag a problem in young children, especially when they are only a few weeks old; at least that's why I pray about such things. Others may have different reasons.
Because praying about such things is completely natural for a Christian. Not only is God interested in the 'small' things in our lives, but he is eminently competent to resolve such issues, having made us and therefore capable of 'regulating' us, and/or of giving us wisdom to know when to go for medical help. Unlike some medical professionals, he never communicates that we've wasted his precious time by mentioning to him our concerns. Even about poo.
Because collects rock and I would love to be able to write them.
Because if Cranmer had had the leisure, and wasn't busy trying to manage a certain megalomaniac monarch in amongst reforming England, he may well have extended his prayer book to include miscellaneous prayers for more occasions. And maybe he'd have included a prayer about such matters.
Because Cranmer's collects always seem to both demonstrate the utter validity of our prayers for earthly concerns, and yet prompt us to think too about things from an eternal perspective. So, even though I haven't really prayed the collect below, the exercise of writing it has helped me to remember there are more significant things to desire and pray for in my boys than merely the regulation of their bodily functions, as important as that might be for their health. More significant are the kind of people they are and are becoming and that they so 'pass through things temporal that they finally lose not things eternal'.Because when I'm sleep deprived I become (even more) eccentric.
Almighty God, the giver of all life, who has formed and known us from our our earliest moment, grant we beseech thee, the proper regulation of bodily functions in this thy little one. In your mercy, so prosper his life that he may grow in strength and wisdom and may by your grace know you, whom to know is life eternal, through Christ Jesus our Lord and for his glory.
