Hearing God’s Whisper Nicolas Herman

‘Nearly four hundred years ago, a teenage soldier was staring at a leafless tree in the middle of a battlefield, when God spoke to him. Suddenly, unexpectedly, Nicolas Herman received an overwhelming assurance that the One who brings trees to bloom in spring could also be trusted to make his barren and rather unpromising life beautiful and fruitful in season.

...By the age of twenty-one, Nicolas already had two professions behind him. His career in the military was over, and he had failed horribly in service as a footman… Feeling drawn to a deeper life, partly by that vision of the tree, Nicolas approached a priory in Paris, where he was given work...in the kitchen for its friars. …He was eventually transferred to the workshop so that he could sit down to make and repair sandals.

...Nicolas was never ‘promoted’ from the workshop to the chapel with its rarefied priestly duties. Instead, for more than fifty years, he simply, humbly continued fixing shoes, diligently learning to discern God’s whisper in the ordinary stuff of life, turning his workshop into a sacred place of prayer.

And this is how Nicolas became fruitful beyond anything he could ever have imagined as a dejected sixteen-year-old soldier staring at that tree. Visitors to the monastery began to seek the counsel of its cobbler, making a beeline for its humble workshop rather than its grand chapel. And countless people to this day continue to thank God for the life of Brother Lawrence, as he became much better known. By training himself to ‘practice the presence of God’ in the ordinariness of life, amid its many disappointments and distractions, his insights have helped millions to develop a more conversational and joyful relationship with the Lord. ‘There is not in the world a kind of life more sweet and delightful,’ he said, ‘than that of a continual conversation with God.’

This, then, is the invitation extended to each one of us: to follow in the footsteps of Brother Lawrence and thousands like him, discovering the ‘sweet and delightful’ reality of a continual, conversational relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, discerning his whispers amid the ordinariness, the busyness and even the setbacks of our mundane lives.’

Lord, I want to rejoice in you ‘always’, participating in continual conversation ‘in every situation’ (Phil. 4:5). Draw me close and help me to hear you whisper in my ordinary day today.

Amen.