a little thought about impersonal prayer

I've always had problems with this.

If I don't know the person I am praying for specifically, I'm a little less heart-felt.
It's like praying for an entire country, or for world peace. Nice, but not very... eh, helpful? Or maybe that's not the right word, because who knows, maybe God would hear that prayer and deliver on world peace just like that. It's just not eh, practical to expect. (Here, I can already hear someone telling me that I need to have more faith and faith can literally move mountains. Yes. I know. But it's still hard to honestly believe world peace would happen after my prayer tonight.)

Or when a friend asks you to pray for a friend's friend who is sick. Or something. Two degrees of separation is probably the hardest for me. Praying for a friend, of course. Praying for a friend's friend, yes, because I can see how that person I don't know is affecting my friend. But going beyond that, it becomes more like a prayer list where I just repeat almost word-for-word what you told me about your friend's friend in a prayer.

Honestly, it's harder to care.
One person is a mourned death. Ten thousand is a statistic. 

Maybe it's because I'm feeling more cynical these days, I dunno.  

But I dunno. It's not about effectiveness, is it? We aren't praying to see results. (Vending-machine-God comes to mind.) We pray more to communicate with God. Because we're a body.
I guess half the struggle is because praying for someone/something usually lies solely in the "asking" part of prayer. Not the praising, or other prayer aspects. 


I guess it is like faith. Trusting in things unseen.
Which is hard, because it's always easier or nicer to see the direct impact of things.

Do you pray for things in your past? For the church that you left, for the people you don't see anymore, or the people who have passed out of your life? Even for organizations where everyone you've known has left?
And how often? Whenever they come into mind? Daily? Once a week?

Duty is a strange thing.
Is it a duty to pray for people? A responsibility?
Love is, I think. Love your neighbors, is a command. You should. You ought to. What then, is prayer also?
I pray for you daily, says Paul.
Is this, too, a command?

I guess it wasn't such a little thought after all.

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Maybe the flaw in the conception of this post is that prayer should arise naturally, like loving someone. It's not about the logistical aspects or who and when and where and how often. But that you desire to pray for someone.
But can you blame me for thinking about how it happens practically in daily life? Amorphous abstract pretty phrases are well and good and we never want to be limited by logic. But.. *shrug. Sometimes the knowledge of who when where and how often helps.