Prayers For All

There is a tendency to give global significance to what is more personal in nature, and so we can think all creation is focused upon or reliant upon us, as though the sun shines or it doesn't because this day is significant to me; and because of what I do, the events of the world can be altered.  This thought has a part to play in our prayer as we ask that phenomena of nature be placed at our disposal, that it rain or not, as though it were to be ours alone.  In prayer such requests are perhaps less appropriate and inclined to overstate our will, as though we should know and ought to judge how events beyond us should evolve.  There is less consideration given to the well-being of the population than is reasonable.  In prayer it might be better to ask that all be as well as it might be and that God's care reach into all lives in the manner God would wish, even though so doing might call for more trust than we have on hand.