I love this so much!
Bless you for just plainly saying so!

Well I will pray for peace for all souls no matter how unrealistic it might seem.

I really don't believe it is necessary to have war to make lions to lay down with lambs.

Hmmm... thinking about Abraham Hicks... if you are going to pray for peace you are actually indirectly saying there is no peace, that something is wrong that needs to be fixed.
By doing so you feed the non-peace vibe, you do not help achieve peace.

If you truly want peace for everyone everywhere you have to become peace yourself. Become love, flow love for everything and everyone. By doing that you add to the positive, you touch other people with your positive loving vibe -including strangers in the street. That way ripples of love, peace, happiness can start to spread out over the world. More people will join as they're touched by love, and then things will start to change.
This may seem like futile and the long way around, but in actual fact it is the shortest route and it is the only route.
Like Abraham Hicks says; "One person who loves is stronger than millions who don't."
If more people listened to Abraham Hicks and understood what it was about, we would have had world peace years ago.

Focusing on praying for peace, and thus indirectly affirming the lack of it, does NOT help.

Amen to that. Thank you Abraham

I see what you're saying here and I agree concerning where we focus our energy.

I also see what others, who chose to pray for peace, are saying.

And I see in this "Well Wishes" Forum lots who have asked to be prayed for and a lot responding to that.

My question and sometimes confusion is why is it okay to pray for an individual who is suffering, but not okay to pray for peace?

Well, I'm going to turn to Abraham Hick's for that:
The same principle goes. When you pray for someone's health you indirectly state and affirm the person isn't healthy, that something is wrong and/or lacking. So that doesn't help that person at all.

To get biblical (to me Jesus isn't biblical btw, he was a truly great healer): When Jesus stood in front of a prostitute, he didn't see a prostitute. He saw a beautiful woman, a glorious wonderful being. He saw her full potential, her soul, her beauty, all that she was.
The same happened when he saw or talked to a leper, a cripple, someone who was ill etc. etc.

What happens when you do that, is that you are connected to their entire being, their healthy being (their soul isn't crippled, a leper, a prostitute, nor ill). And by doing so you help them to raise their own vibration so they can more easily connect with their own real potential as well. Then healing or change can occur.

This is the same principle that when you are positive and happy, on your high flying disk, and talk to a depressed friend, he will start to feel better. You touch him with your own higher vibration, and that will help him to get to his higher vibration as well.
The opposite happens too when you aren't solid and stable: the depressed will drag you down. But it's supposed to go the other way round, if you want to help someone.

Since we aren't Jesus, and it's difficult to truly look beyond what's right in front of you, the best you can do is send love. Not love so they will heal, then you again affirm they aren't well or something is off. But love. Nothing more, nothing less. And even doing just that is difficult for us, as we automatically attach something to that ---> "Poor bugger!"

In any case, it is the same as with world peace, or with anything for that matter. The best and only thing you can do is to work on your own vibration, make sure you are on your high flying disk, are love, are positive, are happy.
And think about the subtle difference between "To be love" or "to be loving". It is not the same. What it's about, is the first. To be love.