Public Prayer...

I find myself perplexed and wondering about the five W questions after this weeks assigned "prayers" to watch and reading through classmates comments and blogs.

I heard a lot of "Who am I praying to/for/on behalf of..." or "what is the purpose of this time of prayer?" "Why am I praying?"

In light of all these questions regarding prayer it is important to note that we are talking about public prayer. Prayer said in the public arena, in a digital media context. For ALL people listening.

Most of the week, I hesitated posting because I just wasn't coming up with anything to say about prayer because I happen to think of prayer as a conversation between me and God. It is sort of a private affair. It has taken me a while to shift myself to the public arena. Still I struggle to think of prayer as anything other than a conversation with God. How does this then inform my sense of prayer in the public arena. Another blogger posed the question of whether or not public and private prayer are different.

The public prayers we listened to for class (Gene Robinson’s prayer; Rick Warren’s prayer; Bradlee Dean’s prayer; Joe Nelms’s prayer)

What I had the most difficult time with and Rich expressed this on his blog as well, was how much social media can and does take pieces of public prayer out of context and uses it against the prayer for better but mostly worse. People are so judgmental and critical, but I guess anytime "things" are made public they are up for grabs on criticism and judgment. This is where I have a hard time telling someone that their prayer was wrong or they way they prayed was not right or that they didn't engage God or prayed for the wrong reasons. Is this really my place?
One last side thought... just like all other arenas in life, there are people who get up because they like to hear themselves talk. They want to be in the lime light. They seem to get it wrong. However, is God not bigger than all of that? All of us? Does God not use even our worst motives, our most egocentric moves for His good? We somehow have come to live in a place where we have decided that we (Americans - perhaps) know what is right and wrong. We know what it means to pray and live as Christians and we go about criticizing everybody around us all the time.

This post has been on my mind all week and I still don't know if what I said is what I wanted to and I am left with more questions... I guess this is a place where I need to continue to explore and be stretched!