Practicing the Presence of God

Brother Lawrence was a seventeenth-century Carmelite monk whose writings and life challenged us to practice the presence of God. He offered the advise that we focus totally on God.

• I have read many books on how to go to God and how to practice the spiritual life. It seems these methods serve more to puzzle me than to help, for what I sought after was simply how to become wholly to God's. So I resolved to give all for ALL. Then I gave myself wholly to God; I renounced everything that was not His. I did this to deal with my sins, and because of my love for Him. I began to live as if there were nothing, absolutely nothing but Him. So upon this earth I began to seek to live as though there were only the Lord and me in the whole world.