On prayer while washing dishes

Because I probably do more dishes than any other single activity, I tape verses to the cupboard door before my face. This week it's Exodus 33:13:

"If I have found favor in your sight, please show me now your ways, that I may know you in order to find favor in your sight. Consider too that this nation is your people."

Of course it isn't very long before two years of seminary exposure kicks in and I begin to question whether I can even validly apply this verse to myself in prayer. The context is historically specific --- Moses has been tapped to lead a recalcitrant people to the Promised Land. The speaker of the words is a special figure --- prophet and foreshadowing of Christ. The reference to "this nation" is to ancient Israel.

The question is not a trifling matter inasmuch as one could pose it about almost any verse in the 39 books of the Old Testament. Unless this is straightened out, both my reading and praying are hamstrung to some degree.

What I have arrived at is the childlike reasoning, based on such verses as 2 Timothy 3:16 and Luke 24:27, that all Scripture is mine, and I may pray it all for myself. Moreover, as to the particular verse in question, the New Testament tells me that everyone who testifies of Jesus is a prophet (Revelation 19:10b), and we who call on Him are a "holy nation" (1 Peter 2:9).

But it's more than that. God's Word is a living word and not a dead word. I believe that Bonhoeffer was right: When I read the Bible I must think here and now God is speaking to me.