Enter into thy closet

"But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." Matthew 6:6

Three commands in a row, all pointing the same way: enter, shut, pray. Jesus builds a place before He says anything about content.

The word rendered "closet" meant, in the Greek of the time, the storeroom of a house — the pantry, the windowless room where provisions were kept. It is not a chapel. It is the least distinguished room in the building, and the only one that shuts.

That settles a common objection: I have nowhere to pray. Nobody did. Jesus is speaking to Galilean villagers whose house is a single room where the children sleep and sometimes the animals too. He is not asking them for an oratory. He is asking them to find the door that shuts, whatever it is.

The contrast in the passage is with those who pray "in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men." Jesus does not condemn public prayer — He will pray in front of crowds Himself. He condemns prayer whose reason is the audience. And the test is simple: would I pray this way if nobody could hear me?

That is why the shut door matters. It does not protect God from noise; it protects you from your own need to be seen. What is left when nobody is watching is your real prayer life — and the discovery is often humbling.

"Thy Father which seeth in secret." The word recurs three times in one verse. Discretion is not being praised for its own sake: the point is that there is a witness, and that He is enough.

Today. Find your storeroom. Not the finest corner of the house — the one that shuts. And go there once, today, without telling anyone.

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