Minor Minutia

"I was glad when they said unto me, 'Let us go into the house of the Lord. Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem....' Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.... Because of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek thy good." Ps. 122:1-2, 6a, 9

The reason that Jerusalem was given such high status by the Jews was because it was the home of the Temple, i.e., the dwelling place of God. Peace was prayed for not for Jerusalem's sake, but rather because of the Temple ("Because of the house of the Lord our God"). By itself, the city was (and is) nothing; just another temporary home of man.
Many, however, still mistakenly pray for peace in Jerusalem because they think that it is the city that is important. It is not. What is important is God, and Him dwelling amongst man. To confuse the cynosure here is similar to what the Israelites did with the ark (I Sam. 4:3): they deemed the ark itself as important rather than the God who the ark represented.
We continue such mistakes today. Though there are plenty of things worth fighting for, we more often than not fight and nit-pick with much candor about minor minutia (frivolous things like denominational jingoism and established lists of approved and disapproved Bible translations, musical preferences, and hair styles). Meanwhile, important things (like God) get lost in the shuffle, and we fall from being the light of the world into just another religion; for the world does not need or rules or opinions. They need God, which means that they need Jesus, the only way back to God (John 14:6).

-Jon Vowell