GO TO YOUR ROOM
February 2007
for the Collect, publication for St. Thomas Episcopal Church,
Medina, WA
“Whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” – Matthew 6:6
Jim Wallis, the author of God’s Politics, writes, “God is personal, but never private.” That’s a great way to approach faith in community. But like most truths, you can put another spin on it and keep the truth of it intact. If God is “in secret” and “sees in secret,” then we can each meet God in private places; indeed, Jesus did so and encourages us to do likewise.
For most of my life, I’ve taken a slapdash approach to prayer. I pray whenever I feel like it, wherever I feel like it, in public or in private, just by having a conversation in my head with God. There’s nothing wrong with this; indeed, Paul exhorts us to “pray without ceasing,” and praying at scattered times is surely a way to get there, right? But the problem is that I only pray “when I feel like it.” I’m speaking to God on my own terms, and when I’m not in the mood, or when I’m not mindful of God, I’m certainly not listening.
Lately, I’ve come to recognize the value of taking up a spiritual discipline. “Discipline” implies that it’s good for us to do something regularly, whether we feel like it or not. Dieting and exercise are bodily disciplines. What are their spiritual equivalents? Fasting and prayer, of course.
Unfortunately, the word “discipline” has other connotations in English: images of punishment. We “discipline” our children, and we wonder: Was I too tough? Was I too soft? But when we only see discipline as a function of crime and punishment, we miss the bigger picture. Discipline is intended to get us somewhere; as a series of isolated events, there’s no good news in it. We discipline our children (and even our pets) to encourage them to change their behavior.
Our baptismal covenant demands: “Whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord.” If I wait until I feel like it, I’m not likely to do this at all. Repentance on our own terms is not repentance.
We pray together in church each week. This is our shared prayer space, and it’s beautiful. But do you have a regular place to pray in private? We teach our children to say their bedtime prayers; how many of us retain this practice in adulthood?
This Lent, practice daily prayer at a specific time, in a specific place. Make it fit your schedule – or change your schedule to make it fit. But undertake it as a discipline. Do not expect results; that’s not the point. Tell God what’s on your mind. Ask for something specific if you need to, but don’t speak for too long. Listen to God, and act on what you hear.