Think often on God, by day, by night, in your business and even in your diversions. He is always near you and with you; leave him not alone.
Interpretation
This quote encourages constant awareness of God's presence in all aspects of life.
Brother Lawrence emphasizes the importance of maintaining a conscious awareness of God throughout daily activities, whether in work or leisure. The quote suggests that God is always present and should not be neglected; rather, one should cultivate a connection with the divine at all times, fostering a spiritual relationship that permeates daily life.
In practice
During a speech on maintaining faith in everyday life.
In order to form a habit of conversing with GOD continually, and referring all we do to Him, we must at first apply to Him with some diligence: but that after a little care we should find His love inwardly excite us to it without any difficulty.
It is enough for me to pick up but a straw from the ground for the love of God.
A little lifting of the heart suffices; a little remembrance of God, one act of inward worship are prayers which, however short, are nevertheless acceptable to God.
If the vessel of our soul is still tossed with winds and storms, let us awake the Lord, who reposes in it, and He will quickly calm the sea.
We should fix ourselves firmly in the presence of God by conversing all the time with Him...we should feed our soul with a lofty conception of God and from that derive great joy in being his. We should put life in our faith. We should give ourselves utterly to God in pure abandonment, in temporal and spiritual matters alike, and find contentment in the doing of His will,whether he takes us through sufferings or consolations.
And it is not necessary to have great things to do. I turn my little omelette in the pan for the love of God.
Our sense of justice depends on our sense of time. Justice is a phenomenon only of consciousness, because time spread out in a spatial succession is its very essence. And this is possible only in a spatial metaphor of time.
Deliberate violence is more to be quenched than a fire
The first and last lesson of religion is, "The things that are seen, are temporal; the things that are unseen, are eternal." It puts an affront upon nature.
Patients who are being kept alive by technology and want to end their lives already have a recognized constitutional right to stop any and all medical interventions, from respirators to antibiotics. They do not need physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia.
The vicarious responsibility for things we have not done, this taking upon ourselves the consequences for things we are entirely innocent of, is the price we pay for the fact that we live our lives not by ourselves but among our fellow men, and that the faculty of action, which, after all, is the political faculty par excellence, can be actualized only as one of the many and manifold forces of human community.
Man has been driven out of the paradise in which he could trust his instincts.
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