Article September 22, 1973 Issue

The Prayer Closet

HELEN L. CONNELLY

WHAT DID CHRIST JESUS SAY ABOUT PRAYING? He told his followers, called disciples, to go into their closet, and when they had shut the door, to pray to God in secret.^{See Matt. 6:6 ;} What kind of closet did he mean, for prayers? Did he mean that we are to put prayers on shelves, or in drawers, as we do clothes or toys? Oh, no! The prayer closet is our thinking, and we can open and shut the door of our thinking. We can shut out bad thoughts and let in good thoughts. Our prayer closet is wherever we are, because wherever we are, we can think. And we can love. Because love is part of praying.

HOW DO WE PRAY? Do we say a lot of prayers we have memorized? Do we just say them with our mouth, while our thoughts think something else? The real way to pray is to think deeply about God. Since God fills all space, there wouldn't be any room in our prayer closet for anything bad. And if bad thoughts should try to sneak into our closet, we close the door on them and shut them out so that they can't keep us from thinking about God. We must close the door on anything that isn't of God. Then we let in those good thoughts we need to think about God.

WHEN SHOULD WE USE OUR PRAYER CLOSET? We can use our prayer closet whenever we want to. When we are in our most secret hiding place or up on a tree branch, our prayer closet is still with us, because our thoughts are always with us.

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