Besides good food, being a waiter was a lot of fun. Not only did I get to know lots of girls, but there was the comaraderie with the other waiters—throwing pans to each other as they came out of the dishwasher, hosing each other with the sprayer, the occasional food fight.
The one thing that never entered my mind in that kitchen…was God.
Paul lived at a time when lots of people, Jews and Greeks alike, were looking for worship that highlighted emotional or mystical experiences. But Paul in effect says, “for the Christian, spiritual worship is kitchen work—it’s taking everything in your everyday life and offering it back to God.”
I resonate with how The Message paraphrases this verse:
What does this kind of transformed life look like?
For me, it’s like climbing up and up a mountain pass until I finally get to the summit. I look out over the panorama of valleys and mountains spread before me and I hear Paul say in my ear, “All of this is worship country. Wherever you travel in it–every step you take–is a step worshipping God. From now on, your whole life—everything that engages you moment by moment—can be an act of worship.”
Let that settle for a moment. It has incredible implications, doesn’t it? It pushes worship outside the church building and into the kitchen.
In the Kitchen
Nicholas Herman was born around 1610 in France and fought as a young soldier in the Thirty Years War, where he had a near fatal injury to his sciatic nerve. It left him crippled and in chronic pain for the rest of his life. He entered a monastery in Paris where he became a cook.
Brother Lawrence, as he came to be known, discovered over 40 years in the kitchen a pure and uncomplicated way to walk continually in God’s presence. By all accounts a gentle man of joyful spirit, Brother Lawrence shunned attention. It was not until after his death that a few of his letters were collected and published in a small pamphlet titled Practicing the Presence of God.
Brother Lawrence is introduced as not enjoying kitchen work!
“So, likewise, in his business in the kitchen (to which he had naturally a great aversion), having accustomed himself to do everything there for the love of God, and with prayer, upon all occasions, for His grace to do his work well, he had found everything easy, during the fifteen years that he had been employed there.”
Even though he didn’t like kitchen work, he grew to find it easy:
That 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. That we should not wonder if, in the beginning, we often failed in our endeavors, but that at last we should gain a habit, which will naturally produce its acts in us, without our care, and to our exceeding great delight
Brother Lawrence’s story is about developing habits—exactly what we’ve focused on these past six weeks (solitude and silence, simpler life, prayer, Scripture). In another place, Brother Lawrence tells us he struggled 10 years before the habit that naturally produced its fruit in him began to take hold:
As he proceeded in his work, he continued his familiar conversation with his Maker, imploring His grace, and offering to Him all his actions.When he had finished, he examined himself how he had discharged his duty; if he found well, he returned thanks to God; if otherwise, he asked pardon; and without being discouraged, he set his mind right again, and continued his exercise of the presence of God, as if he had never deviated from it.
I love these words. They so honestly describe how Brother Lawrence day-by-day, hour by hour, developed his habit of practicing the presence of God. It was a long-term project. He starts over again and again without being discouraged. Perhaps there is hope for us as well!
Way Stations of Worship
If we seek this long-term habit of God-consciousness throughout each day, it would be a mistake of the first order to think we can do it by ourselves.
Such habits as Brother Lawrence practiced do not flow from human willpower or “trying harder.” They do not flow from what we do for God, but from what God in Jesus Christ has already done for us!
The only reason we can “put off the old self” and “put on our new self”—as the apostle describes in Col. 3:19-20 (the key verse for this series)—is because of God’s grace.
One open avenue for God’s grace is worship, although we now understand (from Paul) that a Sunday church service is but the tiniest fraction of the worship we can offer God.
The Pony Express riders who carried the mail across the plains of my native Nebraska had way stations to sustain their journey. Every 15-20 miles, they could get a fresh horse and be refreshed themselves.
Envisioning public worship as a “way station” keeps us from seeing it as either too high or too low.
- We see it “too high” if we think our Christian faith rises or falls on Sunday worship, as some irresponsible pastors imply who belittle the health risks. Christians who have flourished under repressive regimes that restricted public worship will testify that their faith grew stronger as a result. (I know firsthand how the Ethiopian evangelical church thrived under the Communist Derg for almost 20 years.)
- We see it “too low” if we use Paul’s words to “Take your everyday, ordinary life and place it before God as an offering” to denigrate public worship. Brother Lawrence, don’t forget, lived in a monastery which prescribed seven periods of corporate worship every day! I’m sure turning his kitchen work into worship was helped by living in a worshipping environment.
As Bro. Lawrence had found such an advantage in walking in the presence of God, it was natural for him to recommend it earnestly to others; but his example was a stronger inducement than any arguments he could propose.His very countenance was edifying; such a sweet and calm devotion appearing in it, as could not but affect the beholders. And it was observed, that in the greatest hurry of business in the kitchen, he still preserved his recollection and heavenly mindedness. He was never hasty nor loitering, but did each thing in its season, with an even uninterrupted composure and tranquility of spirit.“The time of business,” said he, “does not with me differ from the time of prayer; and in the noise and clutter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Sacrament.”
