The Kitchen Where God Made His Home

Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection spent most of his life washing pots in a Carmelite monastery kitchen in Paris. Born Nicolas Herman around 1614 in Lorraine, France, he was a former soldier with a permanent limp and no formal education. Yet visitors traveled across Europe to seek his counsel, because something unmistakable radiated from this humble kitchen worker.

When asked his secret, Brother Lawrence described what he called "the practice of the presence of God." He had learned to carry on a quiet, continuous conversation with the Almighty — not only during chapel prayers, but while scrubbing burnt cookware and peeling vegetables. "The time of business does not differ from the time of prayer," he wrote. "In the noise and clatter of my kitchen, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees."

This is precisely what Jesus promised in John 14:23: "We will come to them and make our home with them." Not a distant deity observing from heaven, but the Father and Son taking up residence in the ordinary rooms of a human life. Brother Lawrence discovered that when love and obedience open the door, God doesn't merely visit — He moves in. And with that indwelling comes the peace Jesus described, a peace the world's circumstances can neither give nor take away. Even a monastery kitchen becomes holy ground when the Most High makes it His dwelling place.