To Walk as in His Presence

Some men desire greatness in the eyes of others or fame and fortune.  But that is not so with many believers in Christ.  As Christians, our greatest desire should be a personal relationship and communion with God.  That is what Nicholas Herman believed ... so he set out to live his life exactly that way.

He wasn't a Bible scholar or even a highly educated man as far as I know.  But he knew Jesus.  Ah ... he was a smart man wasn't he.  The following statement about this man caught my attention the other day.  For me it's a simple but profound statement  ... "Theological and doctrinal debates bored him, if he noticed them at all."

He didn't want to just talk about God or listen to men debate their opinions of Him  ... that would be wasted time that could have been used ... as he put it ... "To love and fellowship with God more."  Communion with his Lord was so important to him that he didn't intentionally waste a moment doing anything else.

Understand ... Nicholas Herman wasn't a lazy man.  He worked in the kitchen of a French monastery in the seventeenth century serving others as cheerfully as if he was personally serving and cleaning up after the Lord. 

Of his time laboring for others he said ... "The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer, and in the noise and clatter 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." 

He didn't work at communion with God ... he had communion with God while he worked and did for others.

Because he endeavored ... "to walk as in His presence" ... wherever he was, and whatever he was doing, the peace and joy of the Lord was there.  Wherever he walked he considered it as hallowed ground because God was present with him.

So how does someone in today's world come to believe this way?  I found this to be one of his suggestions ... "That you should establish yourself in a sense of God's presence by continually conversing with Him."

But even during our conversation with God, as he put it ... "Useless thoughts can invade our mind and spoil our communion with God."  And when they do, he said ... "I expel them immediately  from my mind." 

This humble man believed that we needed neither, art nor science in coming to God ... only a heart resolutely determined to apply itself to know more about the love and mercy of our Lord.  He said that ... "We need only to recognize that God is intimately present with us; therefore we can address ourselves to Him every moment of our day."

He knew there would be some days when we need His assistance for knowing His will ... "in things doubtful," and for rightly performing those things which we plainly see He requires of us, and even "giving Him thanks" for allowing us to do them.

I believe Nicholas Herman's personal motto for life as stated by him was this ... "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."

He also said that ... "All things are possible to him who believes ... that they are less difficult to him who hopes; that they are more easy to him who loves, and still more easy to him who perseveres in the practice of these three virtues."

At the end of each day, he examined himself as to how he had discharged his duty.  If he found it "well" ... he returned thanks unto God.  If he found it "otherwise" ... he asked pardon, and without being discouraged, he set his mind (in his words) "right again" ... and "Thus" said he, "by rising after my falls" ... with a perfect confidence upon the infinite merits of Jesus Christ, he proposed to himself again, to become the most perfect worshiper of God that he could possibly become ... as he hoped to be throughout all eternity.

In closing this essay about Nicholas Herman, I found this statement he made somewhat curiously interesting.  As I leave it with you, I find my heart wishing I could feel the same.

"I have no pain or difficulty about my state, because I have no will but that of God, which I endeavor to accomplish in all things, and to which I am so resigned that I would not take up a straw from the ground against His order, or from any other motive than purely that of love to Him." 

Oh ... to walk as in His presence.

Blessings ...