Private prayer is the only genuine path to real intimacy
with God.
In private prayer we allow God to know us and
we come to know God differently than distance or pomp
or public rituals can ever allow.
Public prayer always presents us with the temptation
to make our God
either the place or the people with whom we pray.
With all its grandeur and satisfaction,
it can seduce us to believe that because there is
prayer here, this place—these people—must be good.
This kind of prayer can make religion itself an idol.
Blinded by commitment to the group or the splendor
of the place or the moral security that comes
with being “obedient” to a system,
we find cults and holy wars great and glorious things.
Only in the intimacy of the heart, steeped in the words
of the One who is mercy and goodness, justice and
peace, can we see clearly the laws
we are really meant to follow, the life we are truly meant to live.
Then we come to realize that we all come into this world
alone and we leave it the same way.
There is no group, however strong their
hold on our obedience, who, in the end, go with us to the
bar of conscience.
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