Brother Lawrence

I'm re-reading Brother Lawrence's "The Practice of the Presence of God". I'm reminded of a Bible class I once attended that required you to be able to testify about your "salvation experience". The suggestion was made that if you could not recount the point in time that you were saved, said salvation might be in doubt. This was always problematic for me, as I have no recollection of my days prior to belief in Christ, such reality being inculcated in me from the earliest age. I "walked the aisle" as a boy, as did most of my acquaintances, but could not really identify this as a starting point with God.

Brother Lawrence's testimony is even less categorical, but far more profound:

"The first time I saw Brother Lawrence was on the 3rd of August, 1666. He told me that God had done him a singular favor in his conversion at the age of eighteen. During that winter, upon seeing a tree stripped of its leaves and considering that, within a little time, the leaves would be renewed and, after that, the flowers and fruit appear; Brother Lawrence received a high view of the providence and power of God which has never since been effaced from his soul. This view had perfectly set him free from the world and kindled in him such a love for God, that he could not tell whether it had increased in the forty years that he had lived since."

Would that I were "perfectly set free from the world", and to the place where over forty years of life marked no change in the constancy of my own love for God.

Lawrence, a Carmelite monk, lived in the latter half of the seventeenth century and his words are remain inspiring and challenging over four hundred years later. I wonder how many writings of that century have continued to be regularly published and remain as important and relevant as this little collection of thoughts?