When we pray

“And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites… But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.” Matthew 6:5,6.

So we started playing hide-and-seek in the house. Sebin has so much fun when she is playing hide-and-seek with me. I mean, the house is small and there is not that many places where I can hide but she loves it! Sebin is not afraid of counting in the closet. So she goes in to count to a certain number before she starts looking for me. Once she is done counting she zooms out of the closet and runs (yes, she runs around) to look for me. She doesn’t slow down the pace and she would be running all around the place to look for me!

The funny thing is that I am hiding in the most obvious places but she just can’t find me at once. She has to run around a few times to find me. I can hear her footsteps all around but she cannot find me until later. So this one time I decided to stand where Sebin could see me right away. I stood right next to the door. I mean, I was not hiding behind the door where I would be hid when Sebin opened the door. I was stand right next to the door so that when Sebin would open the door, she can see me standing on the plain wall. When Sebin was done counting the numbers, she opened the door and zoomed right past me! She runs to mommy and asks, “Where is Appa! (Daddy)” I wasn’t hiding behind the curtain or anything, I was just right there! Sebin was so focused on running forward that she couldn’t see me. The objective of the game is to find me but she’d forget that for a moment that she just runs even when I am just right there.

We shouldn’t make the same mistake when we pray. The objective of praying is to meet God. It’s not to show off to others how close I am to God. Like hide-and-seek Matthew says that the ‘Father is in a secret place.’ We seek Him because we want to spend exclusive time with the Father. That is the purpose of praying. May God be with you in your journey of praying.