A devotion for Ash Wednesday, GBHEM Lenten series

March 5, 2025 | By Melissa Madara

But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Matthew 6:6

I have a complicated relationship with prayer. I suspect many of us do. 

On one hand, as a pastor and spiritual director, I am in the “business” of prayer. I am the person that groups and individuals look to when sacred words need to be spoken, when the presence of God needs to be “invoked,” or when it is time to signal that it is time to eat.

On a good day, I might serve as the collective voice of the community before the throne of grace, that as a community we might grow in our awareness that even in life’s most mundane moments we are indeed in the presence of God.

But on a more average day (indeed, most days), I fear that the words coming out of my mouth are little more than perfunctory nonsensical babble, as I struggle to keep my ADHD brain focused on the things of God.

In her classic children’s book Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery reflects, through the eyes of the young, orphaned child Anne, on the nature and scope of prayer. Before crafting a long and flowery bedtime prayer (“like the ministers do”), Anne remarks:

If I really wanted to pray I’ll tell you what I’d do. I’d go out into a great big field all alone or into the deep, deep, woods, and I’d look up into the sky—up—up—up—into that lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness. And then I’d just FEEL a prayer. (Montgomery, Lucy Maud, 2018, Anne of Green Gables, Wordsworth Collector’s Editions.)

I think Anne and I could be good friends. 

In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus spends considerable time challenging preconceived ideas that the people hold regarding life, faith and community. In a world in which perceptions, reputations and expectations tend to guide our moral and ethical framework and the actions that arise from such a framework, Jesus opens up to us a whole new way of seeing and experiencing the presence of God.

God is present in the flowery words that the ministers speak from the pulpit.

God is also present in the perfunctory nonsensical babble that comes from the mouths of leaders whose brains have gone temporarily offline.

God is present in the beauty of liturgy.

And God is present in the “lovely blue sky that looks as if there was no end to its blueness.”

God is present in the words of the gathered community.

And God is present when we find ourselves alone in a closet — when words themselves fall short, and the only prayer inside of us is the Spirit of God interceding on our behalf (Romans 8:26) — because we ourselves have nothing.

God is present in both the articulate and the inarticulate; in both word and deed; in the prayers of those “in the business” of prayer as well as those who question the efficacy of prayer yet offer their questions and doubts to God anyway.

On this Ash Wednesday, may you find a place to experience the presence of God in ways that will profoundly nourish and nurture your uniquely created self.