Of course, God is always with us, but it is we who are so often far from him. So could St Augustine lament, in his Confessions: "Too late I loved thee, O thou Beauty of ancient days, yet ever new! Too late I loved thee! And behold thou wert within, and I abroad, and there I searched for thee." It is during adversity that we tend to be drawn closer to our own being, inasmuch as the world's pleasures lift from us, and we are confronted with the one reality that will never depart, our own identity. The Prodigal Son found it in his moment of truth, and the Spirit of God within led him back to his father. He had to go a long way to find God, through many earthly vicissitudes and personal humiliations; by contrast, his cold, virtuous brother, perhaps a man of strong religious observance, was still looking for God whom he had erroneously identified with piety and duty instead of unconditional love. Where the ego is in control, there God is eased out of the picture, no matter how sincere our strivings for him may be. In the same way, the seeker after esoteric knowledge, usually pejoratively called gnosis (though there is a true as well as a false gnosis), will never find the pearl of great price until he or she has quitted all personal demands and submitted in silence to the One who is, whom we call God.

When Jacob had fled from the wrath of his swindled twin brother Esau, he spent the night at a certain place and, taking a stone to support his head like a pillow, he fell asleep. There he had his famous dream of a ladder resting on the ground with its top reaching to heaven, and angels of God going up and down upon it. The Lord was standing beside him, giving him a blessing of support, protection, and a promise of fulfilment in the form of an enormous nation inhabiting the area long after his death. When Jacob awoke, he said, "Truly the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it." Then he became afraid at the fearsomeness of the place, which he saw to be the house of God, the gate of heaven, calling it Beth-E1 (Gen. 28.11-19). Of course, God was no more present there than anywhere else, since his presence is infinite. But Jacob, himself a person of great spiritual sensitivity, was peculiarly open to the divine presence because of his fear as a fugitive.

It must be admitted that there are places where an atmosphere of great sanctity is apparent to anyone of spiritual sensitivity; places of pilgrimage come into this category, as do some, but by no means all, churches. T. S. Eliot, in Little Gidding, writes, "You are here to kneel where prayer has been valid." In such an atmosphere the reality of God is especially strong; this is the human contribution to the divine work of continuous creation in our world. Meister Eckhart boldly says, "God can no more do without us than we can do without him." In our little planet he needs us to put his dearest designs into practice.

If we return to Brother Lawrence's letter, we will find that he actually sees God visiting pain and sickness on us for our good. Our attitude today is very different; the ministry of healing is an important part of the Church's work. But it is right to be reminded that God is the final arbiter of all things, good and bad, fortunate and unfortunate. Later on, Jacob was to have a fight in the middle of the night with a supernatural adversary; the being, in the form of a man, wrestled cruelly with him, dislocating his hip in the conflict, but was none other than the divine presence. Jacob would not let him go until he had obtained a blessing from him (Gen. 32.24-32). Neither should we be delivered from our suffering until we have grown into better people through it. This is our blessing.

Give me, Lord, the strength and courage to go through my travail as a person of integrity, so that I may pass over from the darkness to the light, able now to guide many others on the way.