A Boat Full of Barrels

“Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.” — Philippians 4:6 (KJV)

One year the monastery sent Brother Lawrence on a business trip. He had to travel to Burgundy, a region famous for wine, to buy the community’s supply for the year. It was, Beaufort says, “a very unwelcome task for him.” Lawrence had no head for business. Worse, his leg was so bad that on the boat he “could not go about the boat but by rolling himself over the casks.”

Imagine that scene. A limping monk who hates bargaining, sent to negotiate a big purchase, getting around a cargo boat by rolling over wine barrels. If anyone had a reason to panic, it was him.

He didn’t. Beaufort says he gave himself no uneasiness about it. He simply told God that “It was His business he was about,” and left it with him. And he “afterwards found it very well performed.” The year before, he had been sent on the same errand to another region, Auvergne, and he said he could not even tell how it all came together, but it turned out very well.

This was his normal way of handling hard things. When he faced something he knew he couldn’t do, he would say to God, “Lord, I cannot do this unless Thou enablest me.” And Beaufort says he then “received strength more than sufficient.”

Later, Lawrence went further. He found that when he had a task coming up, he no longer worried over it in advance. Instead, “when it was time to do it, he found in God, as in a clear mirror, all that was fit for him to do.”

To be fair to the planners among us, this doesn’t mean never preparing. Remember, in the kitchen he thought through each job before he started. It means not carrying the weight of tomorrow’s task all through today. There is a difference between planning and worrying. Planning is doing what you can. Worrying is trying to carry what only God can.

You will have your own wine barrels: exams, interviews, a hard conversation, a match, moving to a new school. Do the work you are supposed to do. Then do what Lawrence did. Tell God it is his business too. Ask for strength. And trust that when the moment comes, he will be there with what you need.

One thing to do this week: think of something coming up that you are dreading. Each time the worry comes this week, pray Lawrence’s prayer: “Lord, I can’t do this unless you help me.” Then do one practical thing to prepare, and leave the rest with God.