Morning Coffee - Unstable Sand

In his Eulogy of Brother Lawrence, Abbe’ of Beaufort wrote:  “[Brother Lawrence] decided to seek entrance into a monastic community in order to embrace a type of life whose rules, founded on the firm rock of Jesus Christ and not on the unstable sand of passing feelings, might strengthen him against the instability of his conduct.”

“…and not on the unstable sand of passing feelings…”

Doesn’t it seem that feelings are the foundation of our modern culture? 

How do you feel? 

How did that make you feel? 

What are you feeling now? 

Does it feel good? 

Isn’t there an entire self-help industry built on the study and glorification of feelings?  Aren’t our children taught to honor their feelings over self-discipline and principles?  Isn’t it all about how we feel? 

Time to refill my cup and begin my day – not focused on the unstable sand of feelings but on the firm rock of Jesus Christ, so that I might be strengthened against the instability of  [my] conduct.

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Morning Coffee - Dry Crumbs

I received a clear message yesterday while reading my devotionals.  One theme emanated from both Sarah Young and Brother Lawrence: “Quit your self-centered focusing on others”!   Neither said it quite this way - but this was their shared message.

Sarah Young (Jesus Calling) wrote:

“When you are around other people, you tend to cater to their expectations – real or imagined.  You feel enslaved to pleasing them, and your awareness of My Presence grows dim.  Your efforts to win their approval eventually exhaust you.  You offer these people dry crumbs rather than the living water of My Spirit flowing through you.”

Brother Lawrence (The Practice of the Presence of God) put it this way:

“The most excellent method …of going to God is that of doing our common business without any view of pleasing men, and (as far as we are able) purely for the love of God.

Now I don’t mean to present myself as one who is always putting other people first as in the self-less way of a Mother Teresa. The truth is way far from that.  But I do have a healthy self-centered perspective of thinking too hard and long about how other people might react to what I do and say.  It colors most everything I do and is definitely not what God wants.   As Sarah Young writes, it is exhausting and effectively dries up the flow of Living Water.

I feel a need to pour a second cup of coffee and pray for a day of pleasing God; not pleasing myself.  Only then will His Living Spirit flow through me.

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The Practice of Presence

 I’ve begun reading a new book; one that Brenda at It's a Beautiful Life  mentioned recently.

The title alone – The Practice of the Presence of God (by Brother Lawrence) - is what brought me to the purchase, but I’m not completely finished with the introduction and I already KNOW this will be a book I will love and go back to again and again.

From the introduction by Hal M. Helms:

“In his early days in the Religious Life,, he often spent his entire prayer time rejecting stray thoughts and falling back into them again.  In fact, he confessed, he had never been able to pray by a rule like the others, and that after the required time of meditation he would not have been able to say what it was about.”

“His solution to this difficulty was a simple one: he developed the habit of continual conversation with God.  Whether at prayer or at work, it became his practice to focus his heart and mind on God, thanking Him, praising Him, and asking for His grace to do whatever had to be done.” 

As I said, I believe this will a book, I return to again and again.

More about Brother Lawrence:

From Amazon.com:  “A former soldier, French mystic Nicholas Herman, aka BROTHER LAWRENCE (1611?-1691), was converted to a powerful love of God at age 18 by a humble observation of nature, and his [collected] thoughts … remain among the most pure and most powerful adorations of the divine. A lay Carmelite brother, Lawrence spent most of his time in the monastery's kitchens, and his simple, earthy observations on the direct paths to communication with God continue to inspire those seeking a stronger, more potent spirituality today.”

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