Frank Laubach was a missionary who spent his life among the Mindanao and Moro people groups of the Philippine Islands, ministering to them while furthering education with a highly successful literacy program. While my experience with Laubach and his writing is minimal, I was impacted by this excerpt from his journals, an instance of a person actively set upon practicing the presence of Jesus. It reminds me that submission to the Lord is vital throughout my lawyering days, in all tasks, at all times, even as “I pound the typewriter keys.”
April 22, 1930
This morning I started out fresh, by finding a rich experience of God in the sunrise. Then I tried to let Him control my hands while I was shaving and dressing and eating breakfast. Now I am trying to let God control my hands as I pound the typewriter keys. There is nothing that we can do excepting to throw ourselves open to God. There is, there must be, so much more in Him than He can give us. It ought to be tremendously helpful to be able to acquire the habit of reaching out strongly after God’s thoughts, and to ask, “God, what have you to put into my mind now if only I can be large enough?” That waiting, eager attitude ought to give God the chance He needs.
Oh, this thing of keeping in constant touch with God, making Him the object of my thought and the companion of my conversations, is the most amazing thing I ever ran across. It is working. I cannot do it even half a day—not yet, but I believe I shall be doing it some day for the entire day. It is a matter of acquiring a new habit of thought. Now I like God’s presence so much that when for a half hour or so He slips out of mind—as He does many times a day, I feel as though I had deserted Him, and as though I had lost something very precious in my life.
More excerpts of Laubach’s journals are available at Interacting With Jesus.
