Clay in the Hands

One of the normal evening rituals at our house is family dinner.  We don’t always get to eat together but we try.  It is the one time of the day we can enjoy being together as a family.  Kristi normally cooks and while she never gets much credit, she is a wonderful cook.  When Kristi cooks, I clean the kitchen.

As I was standing over the sink last night washing dishes, I was reminded of one of my favorite books entitled Practicing The Presence of God by Brother Lawrence. Brother Lawrence was born Nicholas Herman in the early 1600’s.  He joined a Carmelite order of monks as a lay brother and lived out his days in a monastery in the French Lorraine.  In this collection of Lawrence’s writings, he tells of how he learned to experience God’s presence in all circumstances.  In fact, Lawrence said he could sense God’s presence in the kitchen among the pots and pans just as strongly as in the chapel during prayers.

The key to sensing God’s presence, Lawrence found, is in our approach.  Everything we do should be done for God’s glory.  As long as our focus is on pleasing God, then everything we do will take on a new purpose.  A result of this new found focus will be that we will begin to sense God’s presence in everything we do.

Try it this week.  It could brighten your day – it might even change your life!