Today I begin a journey of rest. Not rest in the physical sense, but a journey to enter the rest of God – a promise I intend to claim (Matthew 11:28)!

I began a devotional reading of Brother Lawrence’s Practice of the Presence of God. What devotion he demonstrated! What a model! Brother Lawrence (Nicholas Herman) was an unlearned, low class man who was admitted as a Lay Brother to an order of Carmelites in 1666. He had a remarkable conversion experience at the age of 18 that propelled him into a love with God of unmatchable proportions.

Not making it beyond the first page of this text, I find myself in utter awe and astonishment of his love and devotion to God. His great disappointment in God is this: “he had desired to be received into a monastery. . .so he should sacrifice to God his life, with its pleasures” but he “met with nothing but satisfaction” in his sacrifice. Truly, he embraced the Apostle Paul’s perspective that all things are loss compared to knowing the glory of Christ (Philippians 3:7-9).

This simple man also shares the value of continual conversation with God and how shameful it is “to quit His conversation, to think of trifles and fooleries.” What wisdom!

O Lord, create in me a heart designed only for You. May I consecrate my time and my heart to knowing and living by Your Truth. Keep me in Your Presence, O God.