Interior Space

The cultivation of an interior space of prayer is more than a simple luxury of our spiritual lives.  It is a necessity.  Jesus encouraged us to go into our prayer closet and there pray to our Father in secret.  Why the cloak and dagger approach to prayer?

Primarily, Jesus was helping us to remove any sense of show from our prayer life.  When we worship in the temple or the pew we can show off our piety and puff up our ego.  In the prayer closet, there is no show.  I also believe that the isolation of a prayer closet - a cave of the heart - is another way for us to enter into the silence and stillness of God.  We may not always be able to go on retreat, but if we create an interior place of prayer, we always have a place to retreat to.

This modeling of an interior space by encouraging us to go to a prayer closet in secret, is also helping us to establish the idea and notion that we have a place within in which God can TABERNACLE with us.  God can dwell in us, meet with us, abide with us in this inner closet.

The cave of the heart is the place of meeting.

Go there often and wander.

TJM+