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As the Carmelite monks chanted psalms in their church across the courtyard, the head cook labored in the monastery kitchen. There, against the background hiss of boiling water and the steady beat of his knife against the chopping block, stood a middle-aged man—a lay brother whose duties prevented him from joining the others in prayer. Some people might have resented being left with stacks of dishes while other monks were praying, but not this fellow. As he saw it, everyday duties were no hindrance to what he identified as "the holiest, most ordinary, and most necessary practice of the spiritual life."
His name was Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection. And even amid the stresses and distractions involved in preparing a meal for a hundred people, he was delighting in God’s presence and speaking with him as he worked. This “practice of the presence of God,” as he called it, is the reason we know Brother Lawrence today.
As a lay brother, Lawrence had the humblest position in his seventeenth-century Paris monastery. Nonetheless, his approach to prayer—formed and tested in the heat of the kitchen—is a priceless legacy that continues to touch thousands of people.
Alert to God. The serene joy of this humble cook reaches us today through just one small book—The Practice of the Presence of God—that presents some of his letters, conversations, and “spiritual maxims.” It speaks wisdom to those of us who tend to identify with busy…
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