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Prayer is a thought or word or both that is believed to be a message to God, and to those who hear it, it is welcome or unwelcome. Prayer has a way of touching a lot of lives. It is not the content of prayer or the value of prayer that I want to talk about here.  I leave that for other times. I want here to talk about public prayer of which there is a lot.  Not in campaign speeches. That might offend someone in the audience, although maybe in a particular campaign audience you’ll find it. Someone in disparate circumstances, a sinking ship, a burning building might pray; I exclude them from the following. But a coach huddled with his team before the game starts. Members of a non-profit rallying together. Any group anywhere. On all kinds of occasions people will gather together and there might be a public prayer, and that’s the problem because the one who is praying will also be giving a speech, and the speechmaker wants to be noticed, even a little bit. That’s the problem.

Consider Matthew 6:5-6.

“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by men.”  “They have their reward. But when you pray, go into your room shut the door and pray to your father who is in secret.” And what is the prayer we should pray in secret? We call it the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus told us to pray it in secret!

In secret. That’s when it is OK to pray. A memorized prayer in church or the dinner table is, I think, OK,  but at the root of them all is that any prayer is intended for God, not you and me, and it should not be a speech. Look again at Matthew where Jesus introduced “The Lord’s Prayer”. Jesus said to us that our prayer to Him should be in secret. Imagine that.