I’m struck this morning, in reading the second reading from the Office of Readings for Ash Wednesday, by this verse: “Tell the sons of my people: If their sins should reach from earth to heaven, if they are brighter than scarlet and blacker than sackcloth, you need only turn to me with your whole heart and say, ‘Father,’ and I will listen to you as a holy people.”

God, first and foremost, wants relationship with us. That’s why he said to Adam and Eve immediately after they had sinned, “Where are you?” He felt the loss of relationship. He didn’t want any separation from them. And he feels it with us as well. He wants union and intimacy with us. That is what drives all that he does with each of us personally. His desire to have full and complete intimacy with us.

And he makes it so easy. We need only turn to him with our whole heart and say “Father!” He wants each of us to know him as Father, not taskmaster, not even master, but Father. A tender Father of mercies.

This is the point of Lent. This is the point of making space in our lives, of putting aside things, of fasting. It’s all to help our hearts, to quiet our hearts in order to turn to him and say “Father.”

Our prayers do not need to be long. He’s just asking one word of us said with our whole heart: “Father.”