“But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door and pray to your Father in secret.” (Matt 6:6).

Your inner room is a figure of speech for your innermost self, your deepest self where you are alone with God. By virtue of our Baptism and through receiving the Eucharist, we believe that God dwells within us, and that we dwell within God.

God is everywhere. We can feel God’s presence in the strength and beauty of the setting sun, in the brilliant colors of an early morning sunrise, in the innocence of a newborn baby, in the scurrying of God’s critters and creatures, birds and hawks and baby deer outside our back doors, through the swishing and swaying of deeply forested trees dancing in the wind, and through myriad other experiences that awaken a sense of spirituality in and through us.

When we allow ourselves to slow down, therefore becoming conscious of the present moment, there is much more to life and to ourselves within our lives, to become aware of. Of course, all of this means removing or quieting ourselves from the noise and constant intrusion of social media, the news, politics, and consumerism that come at us so quickly, inclining us to feel numb and separated from ourselves.

What an oasis filled with Gods peace and love, serenity and freedom, going to our inner room can be. Here, in our freely chosen time-out space with God, we are secluded from the constant noise and grind of the everyday, positioned and freed to get to know ourselves better. In our inner room we are positioned to know our feelings, we are positioned to know who we really are and who we would like to become, not who other people would like us to be.

In our inner room we can quietly reflect on our marriage, our parenting, our relationships, to listen to our hearts with God in them, to understand what it is we might want to change to be true to our hearts and what is meaningful to us.

In our inner room we are at peace with our God who loves us, with our God who knows us so well, who wants to guide us, affirm us, dig in with us and explore with us what we might want to change, encourage us, strengthen us, and help us to love ourselves enough to take in the good feelings, safety, and security that come from knowing just how much God loves us.

In our inner room we’re strengthened and given the courage to face and to ferret out those feelings we run and hide from because we believe they will harm us. In our inner room with God with us, we learn instead that the very feelings we dread and fear, are the feelings that build bridges, not walls, to our understanding. Only through understanding those fearful feelings that we have been taught to avoid, are we able to deal with and manage them, rather than them managing us.

You see, the more we allow closeness with our God in our inner room, the more darkness begins to fade into Light. That Light is God’s Grace, Wisdom, Compassion, Caring, and Kindness. It is God’s Love in Oneness with us, saying “Come back to me with all your heart, don’t let fear keep us apart.”

My prayer for you all through Lent is that by establishing a habit of going into your inner room with God during the 40 days of Lent, you will find a treasured space that you want to return to again and again. A space that is all about your and God’s time together. And that once you learn to love that space and that time, both the telling and the listening, you inner room will be a space you return to, everyday of your life.