Let Us Begin

“Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you.” — James 4:8 (KJV)

By now you might have noticed that Brother Lawrence repeats himself. Every letter, every conversation, comes back to the same thing: think of God often, talk to him, trust him. He knew it. In one letter he wrote:

“You will tell me that I am always saying the same thing. It is true, for this is the best and easiest method I know; and as I use no other, I advise all the world to do it.”

He was serious about how much this mattered. “Were I a preacher,” he wrote, “I should, above all other things, preach the practice of the presence of God.” He thought it was “so necessary” and also “so easy too.” Easy, not in the sense that it takes no effort, but in the sense that it needs no special talent. Beaufort records him saying that “there needed neither art nor science for going to God, but only a heart resolutely determined to apply itself to nothing but Him.” You don’t have to be clever, or gifted, or old, or calm by nature. A clumsy footman managed it.

He laid out the logic in a chain of questions, and it is worth reading slowly:

“How can we pray to Him without being with Him? How can we be with Him but in thinking of Him often? And how can we often think of Him, but by a holy habit which we should form of it?”

That is the whole thing. Prayer needs his company. His company comes by thinking of him often. Thinking of him often comes by habit. And habits are built one small repetition at a time.

He was realistic about how long it takes. Writing about a keen beginner he was helping, he said: “She seems to me full of good will, but she would go faster than grace. One does not become holy all at once.” Don’t be discouraged if this week feels clumsy. So did his first years. He said at the beginning it can feel like lost time, but to keep going.

And it does grow. Lawrence noticed that the more we know God, the more we love him, and the more we love him, the more we think of him, because, as Jesus said, our heart is where our treasure is. He wrote that “our heart will be with our treasure.”

So here is his invitation, in his own words from a letter to an old friend: “Let us begin, then. Perhaps He expects but one generous resolution on our part. Have courage.” You don’t have to wait until you are older, or holier, or less busy. You can begin today, in the middle of your ordinary life, with a quick turn of the heart: “My God, here I am.” Brother Lawrence would say that is exactly where God has been waiting for you.

One thing to do this week: make Lawrence’s “one generous resolution.” Pick a time each morning to say, “God, I want to be with you today,” and then keep turning back to him all day using the habits from this book. At the end of each day, thank him for the moments you remembered, and don’t worry about the rest.