In preparation for our Lenten journey, we learned that prayer is a response, always. While we often think of praying as our reaching out to God, in truth, we can cry out to God, complain to God, and commune with God only because He has spoken first, because He has acted first.

That’s the way our scriptures tell the story anyway. God speaks, breathing us into life with Him, and even when we’d trade that life for something less, He continues to act in our favor, making a way for us to commune with Him.

It is because prayer is a response to God’s Word and work, that we can again, approaching Lent’s ending, pray with the tax collector (Luke 18:9-14) as we consider what God has done to ensure we can respond to Him. So, as you pray the short and simple words alongside your sisters and brothers in Jesus today, remember, as we learned, from where you pray them…at the atoning sacrifice, the cross of Christ where His life was given up for us so that it might be given to us.

“God, make atonement for me, a sinner!” (Luke 18:13)