Closet Space

No room in our closets? No room to pray. The teaching about our only having one coat, one shirt, one pair of pants having given the rest to those who have none is about making room in our closets to pray. Otherwise our possessions crowd out our prayers.
Possessions are about buying and selling, about holding on to what is ours. Prayer is about giving and receiving, about putting into God’s hands what we otherwise clutch tightly with our own. The emptier the closet, the bigger the prayers.

But sometimes an empty closet still isn’t enough room to pray.
I know a man who when he closes himself into his closet enters into an echo chamber of abuse and hatred and grudges and retained memories that suffocate the possibility of speech. He can’t ask, he can’t receive, he can’t forgive nor receive forgiveness. He can’t be present, he can’t be thankful, he can’t change nor be changed...he steps into the closet and when he comes out again he comes out wizened and beaten; energized only in his vow to continue the war which has ended for everyone else.

If you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins. Matthew 6:15

Closet space is about finding the strength to follow Jesus. It is about making a place where we can talk to God and God can talk to us. It is about opening our hands to receive and to let go. Neither which a closed fist can do.
To not forgive is a closed fist. It is clinging to what is past. With a closed fist we can clutch, we can punch, we can bang the table to emphasize our complaint - things we can’t do with an open hand.
To possess is also a closed fist. It is to claim something as 'mine' or 'ours' and then build an entire security system around it to make certain it stays ours.
Whether grudges or possessions we must let them go. To open our hands.
For as long as our fists remain closed, we can receive nothing from God – whether bread or forgiveness or anything else God wants to give us. That is why the petition about asking for our daily bread is as much about forgiveness as it is about food as it is about selling all to follow him.

To find the strength to follow him takes open hands. It’s about putting into God’s hands what we otherwise clutch tightly in our own i.e. our next meal, our security, our future, so we are free to follow him unencumbered by our worry about such things.

Anyone who wants to be my disciple must follow me, because my servants must be where I am. John 12:26

Where he is, is among the poor in spirit, among the persecuted and condemned, the despised and the outcast, the alienated and the weak...welcoming them with open hands, proclaiming the Kingdom, insisting we be free to do the same...