And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come, he was there alone.
-- Matthew 14:23
Jesus's most powerful and intimate prayers came when He was alone on a mountain. Because of the degraded and defiled state of the temple in Jerusalem, the pristine silence of the mountains had become Christ's sacred precinct for communing with His Father.
We each must find our sacred place where we can be alone, quiet, and in tune with the Holy Spirit, be it the temple or our closet. It is when we are alone that we can sense that we are not really alone. Although the gospel writer did not report the substance of Jesus's prayer on the mount, we can assume it was not a monolog.
Even Jesus needed to escape the distractions of the world and His daily service to immerse Himself in the presence of God. Alone and unobserved, we can be ourselves - our true selves. And when we are ourselves, God can be Himself with us.
