What Happened to the Prayer Closet?

"But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." -Matthew 6:6

Jesus, here in Matthew 6, is giving instruction on prayer. He gives us a command to pray within this verse. He doesn't say if you pray, He says "when thou prayest." A trademark of the Christian should be their prayer life. Jesus goes further than just the command, He also says something about the character of the area in which we pray. Jesus says to go into your closet and shut the door. My study at home is in the basement of our house. Technically, we have four bedrooms in our house, but my study is plenty big enough to be a bedroom. The only reason that it is not a bedroom is that it has no windows. Under today's building regulations, you can only count rooms with windows as bedrooms. Technically, my study is a closet because it has no windows from which you can see inside or outside. Why did Jesus command them to go to the closet to pray? It's a secret place. When we have company over to our house, they will see the living room, kitchen, and sometimes even take a tour of the bedrooms, but never have we said "You have to see our closet!" The closet is considered a place of secret prayer, where we get no glory or recognition for our time with God, because God and the believer are the only two present. While I'm not saying you need to convert that linen closet in your hallway into a standing prayer room, I will say that having a personal, secluded space for you to talk with God will help your prayer life tremendously.