Skip to main content

Brother Lawrence

Brother Lawrence’s Practicing the Presence of God is an interesting and rewarding read. A collection of letters, observations, and reflections by a Parisian lay brother associated with the Carmelites that lived in the second half of the 1600’s, the book represents a departure from many “standard” works on spirituality and contemplation. In fact, having read many other books, this one seems to be a bit too simple. But therein lies its value. It calls us back to where we are to be headed.

You see, its easy, being human, to grasp hold of a new system of spirituality, learn its techniques in and out, and then proceed to structure our lives by it. We tend to major in living that system rather than using the system to get us where we want to be.

Brother Lawrence’s advice is simple and straight forward: Decide to love God and live in His presence, and all the rest falls into place. Not that we will have an easy life physically, or that we will always enjoy what we are assigned to do, but determining to live in the awareness of and in submission to God is greatly satisfying in that we return to the place we were made to be.

While Brother Lawrence kept the daily offices of prayer, his writing makes them appear to be interruptions rather than natural for him. In his life, one that starts the day with an “OK God, this one’s for you” sort of an attitude, praying before doing the slightest work, and then when idle, returning to the presence of God through prayer and contemplation, the formality of the daily office seems to be less than needed – although he does not recommend avoiding them.

There are other practices of Brother Lawrence’s that appear simple, but don’t allow for much argument. The first is at least a daily reflection on how he did that day. Did he work as well as he could have? Did he reflect his God in an honoring manner? This daily examen was not to cause himself more emotional pain, but was an honest attempt at continued growth and submission to God. Whether during this daily review or at some other point in the day, if Brother Lawrence detected that he had not been the person he wanted to be, he would immediately confess his shortcoming to God and ask for forgiveness. After that, he wouldn’t mention it again, trusting that God had heard him, and had forgiven him. That having been done, there was no reason to bring up the subject again.

No doubt you have noticed that there are no great systems of contemplation, no sacred places per se, no series of defined theological terms, no systematic superstructure at all. The entire enterprise consists of a serious and dedicated submission to God with a continual seeking to be in God’s presence through prayer and contemplation.

All other spiritual formation efforts and systems are designed to achieve at least this degree of living in the awareness of God. Perhaps a truly mystical experience of God would be beyond this type of life, but this type of life would surely provide the foundation for an experience of the Creator as direct as some writers have described.

Give Brother Lawrence a try. He might make your spiritual life a bit easier.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Obedience Rather Than Sacrifice

Saul it seems, was instructed to have the Israelite completely destroy the Amalekites – people and animals. Rather, Saul allowed the Israelites to capture the Amalekite king, and to bring back the choicest live stock. When Samuel returns to visit Saul, the bleating of the sheep and the lowing of the cattle are clearly audible. Assuming that the Israelites had done what had been directed, Samuel finds this noise to be somewhat unexpected, and so he asks Saul to explain what has happened. Saul’s response is a two-parter. The first is that the people have brought back the best of the plunder to sacrifice it to God. The second is that Saul was afraid of the people and so he let them bring back the plunder [and in this explanation, we don’t know why]. Samuel’s response is his mission for God, and he will complete it. Samuel tells Saul that he has failed in his mission to destroy the Amalekites and as a result God has rejected him as king of Israel. In Samuel’s discussion with Saul, he says:

Elders redux

A reader (I am always amazed that people actually read this blog) submitted a rather long comment on the original post on Elders. It is apparent that the reader did some good homework as the comment has several, well, more than several, reference citations. It is clear that they both read the original post and did some Bible study before posting their comment. Because the comment was so long, I thought it appropriate to post another entry rather than bury the response in the comment log. In the following discussion, I have included the text of the comment without the Scripture references. If you want to read the comment in its entirety, scroll to the Elders post and click on the comment. --------------------------------------------------------- [Comment~~~~The church is expected to be a people in exactly this sense. We are the people of God who are charged with continuing and preserving the values, culture, hopes, and the identity of God’s people in our time.~~~~ Does this include th

Naaman's Dipping and Requests

The familiar story of Naaman dipping in the Jordan is a story with more than a few twists. Let's review the story first. Naaman we are told had been used by YHWH to punish Israel and our story describes him as a man of valor in high regard by his boss, the King of Syria the current thorn in the side of Israel. It turns out though that Naaman suffers from some sort of leprosy.  On one of Syria's raids into Israel, the Syrians captured an Jewish girl who had found her way into Naaman's household as a servant for his wife. Knowing of Naaman's illness, she suggests to her matron that there is a prophet in Israel who could help him. This message gets transmitted to Naaman who takes it to his boss. The boss - the king of Syria, tells Naaman to travel to Israel and gives him a letter to Israel's king directing that Naaman be healed. Upon Naaman's arrival in Israel he gives the letter to Israel's king who reacts in a panic. He does not even consider finding t