2 Maccabees 1:1-6: in context

Second Maccabees is a different kind of book from the first. Where the first tells the revolt as a running narrative, the second opens with letters, and this is the first of them: a note from the Jews of Jerusalem and Judea to their kindred scattered across Egypt. It reads like a blessing set down on paper. May God do good to you and remember his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. May he give you a heart to worship him, open your heart to his law, hear your requests, be reconciled to you, and not forsake you in an evil time.

There is no instruction in it yet, no demand. The homeland is writing to the diaspora, the center to the far edge, and the whole content of the letter is prayer. It ends with the plainest line of all: now we are praying for you here. The letters go on to urge the Jews of Egypt to keep the feast of the temple's rededication, the days that became Hanukkah, but they begin by simply telling the distant that they are held in prayer at home.

Jerusalem's first word to its scattered people was that it was praying for them. When I reach out to someone far off, is my first instinct to correct them, or to pray for them?