Years ago and miles away when I was a young girl and my daddy was a pastor, he was invited to join other clergymen in our community and meet the founder of “Each one, Teach one.” Daddy wisely brought me along. What this man shared, I do not remember.
I do remember sitting on a folding chair in a circle in the basement of the Methodist Church knowing I was in the presence of greatness. I didn’t especially know why he was so renown, I just knew that my daddy honored me enough to invite me to meet this extraordinary visionary. It was the opportunity of a lifetime. I was the only child in the circle of graying adults.
Recently, I was introduced to Frank Laubach’s “Letters by a Modern Mystic through Awakenings Prayer Institute. When I mentioned that I had met Dr. Laubach when I was a child, the group leader’s eyes widened and she asked, “Did he glow?” That I do not remember! But I know he carried an essence I have never forgotten.
Written in 1930 from the Philippines, Dr. Laubach’s intention was to think on God for one moment of every waking minute. This became his passion to remember God minute by minute and to seek to flow in his Creator’s will. Out on the mountain top during his evening walk, he would allow his voice to flow with God’s words; back in his study, he would allow his fingers to find God’s words on the typewriter.
Penned to his father on 22 September 1930, Dr. Laubach wrote, “We have got to saturate ourselves with the rainbows and the sunset marvels in order to radiate them. It is as much our duty to live in the beauty of the presence of God on some mount of transfiguration until we become white with Christ as it is for us to go down where they grope, and grovel, and groan, and lift them to new life. After all the deepest truth is that the Christlike life is glorious, undefeatably glorious. There is no defeat unless one loses God, and then all is defeat, though it be housed in castles and buried in fortunes.”
Now I know why Daddy wanted me to meet Dr. Laubach.
