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!

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I read a blog post earlier this week from Glenn Packiam entitled, “Practicing the Wrong Presence.”  (You can link to it here).  In that post, Glenn makes the point that we often say we want to experience God’s presence.  But in reality, God is always present.  You quite possibly have heard me say or read when I have written that we should not think of God’s presence as something that comes and goes.  We don’t “come into the presence of God.”  We should rather think of it as being sensitive to God’s presence.

I love the way Glenn uses the word presence to make this point.  He states that the issue isn’t whether or not God is present with us, but rather whether or not we are present with God.  You see, God will never leave nor forsake us – God is always with us.  The question we need to ask ourselves is “Are we present with God.”

Have you ever been talking to someone and you can tell they are distracted or maybe thinking more about what they are going to say next than actually listening to you.  Doesn’t that drive you crazy (if I have done that to you lately – I apologize!)?  Trying to talk to someone who is not present mentally or emotionally is very frustrating and not very meaningful for either party involved.

Don’t do that to God!

Practice being present to God and to others today – you won’t regret it (and neither will those around you).

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