“Lord – Protect my family and me. Forgive me my sins, and help me guard against pride and despair. Give me the wisdom to do what is right and just. And make me an instrument of your will.”
A simple prayer. Protection… Forgiveness… Humility and Hope… Wisdom… Willingness… It’s a prayer not too different from many I have prayed myself.
But a lot of people are upset about this particular prayer. Not so much the words it contains, but the source of these words. The prayer was actually taken out of a crevice in the Western Wall in Jerusalem. It had been placed there last week by Barak Obama while he toured the region.
Whatever your politics are, this raises a lot of questions:
Does the prayer tell us anything about what’s really going on in the heart and mind of the Presidential nominee?
Why would a Jewish seminary student think it was ok in this situation to take someone else’s prayer out of the wall?
Should the world really be privvy to private conversations with God?
Will this change any conservative Christian minds about who Barak Obama really is?
What is it that causes so many to be so skeptical of his motives/intentions/abilities?
Was this simply a strategic way to appear more spiritually minded?
What do you think?