The presence in the kitchen
Brother Lawrence among the pots
In a seventeenth-century monastery in Paris, a clumsy, uneducated lay brother named Lawrence was assigned to the kitchen — work he openly disliked. He had no gift for contemplation, no scholarly theology, no dramatic visions. What he had was a simple, stubborn determination never to be far from God, even among the pots and pans.
And he discovered something the learned often miss: that God's presence is not reserved for the chapel and the hour of formal prayer, but is just as available over a sink full of dishes. He learned to turn the clatter of his kitchen into a continual quiet conversation with God — a glance, a word, a small act of love offered in the middle of the most ordinary tasks.
The time of business, he said, did not differ for him from the time of prayer; in the noise and clutter of his kitchen he possessed God in as great tranquility as if he were kneeling at the altar. He had stopped dividing his life into sacred and secular, and simply practiced the presence of the One who was always there.
“We ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.”
— Brother Lawrence — The Practice of the Presence of God
Practice the presence of God in the ordinary — turn the kitchen, the commute, and the inbox into meeting places with a Father who never leaves.
“I have set the LORD always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.”
We split life into sacred moments and a secular remainder, and so meet God only in set-apart times while the rest of the day runs without him. The interior work is to dissolve the division — to believe God is as present over the dishes as at the altar — and to build the habit of turning to him through the ordinary, until intimacy is not an event but an atmosphere.
Pick one routine task this week — washing up, driving, walking — and practice the presence in it: a glance toward God, a short word, the work itself offered for love of him. Set the Lord before you in the mundane.
We are quietly content to give God a scheduled half hour as long as the other waking hours stay our own, life tidily split into sacred and secular. But the partition is false — the Father surrounds the commute, the inbox, the kitchen — and a soul that keeps turning to him in the ordinary is never once out of his presence.
We tend to imagine intimacy with God as something that happens in set-apart moments — the quiet time, the church service, the retreat — and the rest of life as a sacred-free zone we simply pass through. Brother Lawrence quietly dismantles the division. If God is always present, then every moment, even the most mundane, is a possible meeting place, and the dishes are as holy as the sanctuary.
The love of the Father is not waiting for you only in your devotions; it surrounds you in your commute, your inbox, your kitchen. The practice of the presence is simply the habit of turning, again and again through the day, to the God who never leaves — a glance, a word, a small thing done for love. Try this week to set the Lord always before you, and watch the ordinary fill up with him.
- Do I meet God only in set-apart moments, or in the ordinary too?
- Where have I divided my life into sacred and secular?
- What routine task could become a meeting place with God this week?
Lord, you are as present in my kitchen as in any chapel. Teach me to set you always before me, and to find you in the ordinary hours. Amen.