Letters By Frank
Laubach
Foreword
A rare experience awaits any one who reads these
selections from the letters of Frank Laubach. In them a
great spirit has opened the very doors of his soul and
invited us into the inner sanctuary to share his experience
of God. To read this book quietly and with sympathetic
insight is to find oneself transported into an atmosphere of
dedication, of discernment and of spiritual ecstasy which
reminds one of St. Francis of Assisi. It is as exciting as
breathing the ozone of a mountain summit and makes the
reader long to rise on the wings of the spirit as the author
has done.
Who is this man who expresses himself, when occasion
requires, in the scientific language of the day yet speaks
with a timeless voice of a great mystic? It is very
characteristic of Dr. Laubach that in these letters he gives
us only the barest glimpses of himself and his work. The
fascinating story of his service to the Moros during the
years when the letters were written is barely suggested.
What is of supreme importance to him and what he wants in
all modesty to share with others is his own inner religious
experience, yet to know something more of the man and his
work gives new meaning to the letters.
Frank C. Laubach went with his wife to the Philippines as
a missionary in 1915. For the first seven years of his
service he gave himself unstintedly and with great
effectiveness to the building of evangelical churches on the
North Coast of the great southern island of Mindanao and to
the broader contacts with the culture and leadership in the
Islands which has always characterized him. These churches
on the North Coast have continued to progress and still show
markedly the effect of his formative influence.
His next great service was concerned with the
establishment and conduct of a Union Theological Seminary in
Manila. Dr. Laubach was a prime mover in these plans and
went to Manila not only to be one of the Seminary's first
teachers, but to give strong spiritual leadership in the
changing life of the city. The Seminary continues to be a
vitally important institution of the evangelical movement in
the Islands. Here again he rendered constructive service,
the results of which continue. It was during this period
that Dr. Laubach wrote his scholarly and sympathetic book,
The People of the Philippines, and his delightful picture of
the Islands for young people entitled Seven Thousand
Emeralds.
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PAGE TWELVE ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
September 28, 1931
A continuous silent conversation of heart to heart
with God
The fashion today is to place God in court and give
him a trial. We have had such a lust for "debunking" every
good and useful man in history that even God cannot escape.
It is one of the unfortunate by--products of the quest for
truth, plus an unlovely hunger in humanity for scandal. It
is a species of jealousy. We dislike to believe that anybody
else is quite as good as we are, not even God.
As for me, I choose to stop following this current, to
stop posing as the judge of the universe. If it brought any
good results I might continue, but to date it has carried me
out into the desert and left me there. The books one reads
also end on the desert.
I choose another road for myself. I choose to look at
people through God, using God as my glasses, colored with
his love for them.
Last year, as you know, I decided to try to keep
God in mind all the time. That was rather easy for a
lonesome man in a strange land. It has always been easier
for the shepherds, and the monks, and anchorites than for
people surrounded by crowds.
But today it is an altogether different thing. I am no
longer lonesome. The hours of the day from dawn to bed time
are spent in the presence of others. Either this new
situation will crowd God out or I must take him into it all.
I must learn a continuous silent conversation of heart to
heart with God while looking into other eyes and listening
to other voices. If I decide to do this it is far more
difficult than the thing I was doing before.
Yet if this experiment is to have any value for busy
people it must be worked under exactly these conditions of
high pressure and throngs of people.
There is only one way to do it. God must share my
thoughts of Moro grammar, and Moro epics, and type, and
teaching people to read, and talking over the latest
excitement with my family as we read the newspapers. So I am
resolved to let nothing, nothing, stop me from this
effort save sheer fatigue that stops all thought.
One need not tell God everything about the people
for whom one prays. Holding them one by one steadily before
the mind and willing that God may have his will with them is
the best, for God knows better than we what our friends
need, yet our prayer releases his power, we know not how.
I propose to make a strenuous effort of the will to
concentrate upon each person I meet alone and to send him my
thought of God. I propose to think as hard of the will of
God as I can when in crowds. Thus I hope to prove by
experimentation what this will accomplish toward making a
better world.
. . . . . .
This afternoon has brought a wonderful experience, all
inside my own mind. I closed my eyes to pray and the faces
of those before me, then those in the houses near by, then
those down the line, and across the river, and down the
highway to the next town, and the next, and the next, then
in concentric circles around the lake, and over the
mountains to the coast, then across the sea to the north,
then over the wide ocean to California, then across America
to the people whom I know, then over to Europe to the people
whom I have met there, then to the Near East where my
missionary friends live, then to India where I have other
friends, to others in China, and to the multitudes who are
suffering the dreadful pangs of cold and starvation--around
the world in less than a minute, and for a time the whole of
my soul seemed to be lit up with a divine light as it held
the world up to God!
I cannot get God by holding him off at arm's length like
a photograph, but by leaning forward intently as one would
respond to one's lover. Love so insatiable as the love of
God can never be satisfied until we respond to the limit.
Nor will He be satisfied until His aching arms receive my
neighbors, too, and all the surging multitudes of the world,
all of us together responding to Him and to one another.
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PAGE THIRTEEN ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
September 28, 1931
A gentle pressure of the will
When one has struck some wonderful blessing that all
mankind has a right to know about, no custom or false
modesty should prevent him from telling it, even though it
may mean the unbarring of his soul to the public gaze. I
have found such a way of life. I ask nobody else to live it,
or even to try it. I only witness that it is wonderful, it
is indeed heaven on earth. And it is very simple, so simple
that any child could practice it. Just to pray inwardly for
everybody one meets, and to keep on all day without
stopping, even when doing other work of every kind.
This simple practice requires only a gentle pressure of
the will, not more than a person can exert easily. It grows
easier as the habit becomes fixed.
Yet it transforms life into heaven. Everybody takes on a
new richness, and all the world seems tinted with glory. I
do not of course know what others think of me, but the joy
which I have within cannot be described. If there never were
any other reward than that, it would more than justify the
practice to me.
. . . . . .
Today I have noticed that when I forget other people I
become fatigued rather quickly. When I am reminded of my
purpose and start again holding people, seen and unseen,
before God, a new exhilaration comes to me, and all the
fatigue vanishes.
October 11, 1931
Deepening discovery
Knowing God better and better is an achievement of
friendship. "When two persons fall in love there may be such
a strong feeling of fellowship, such a delight in the
friend's presence, that one may lose oneself in the deeping
discovery of another person." The self and the person loved
become equally real.
There are, therefore, three questions which we may ask:
"Do you believe in God?" That is not getting very far. "The
devils believe and tremble." Second, "Are you acquainted
with God?" We are acquainted with people with whom we have
had some business dealings. Third, "Is God your friend?" or
putting this another way, "Do you love God?"
It is this third stage that is really vital. How is it to
be achieved? Precisely as any friendship is achieved. By
doing things together. The depth and intensity of the
friendship
will depend upon variety and extent of the things we do and
enjoy together. Will the friendship be constant? That again
depends upon the permanence of our common interests, and
upon whether or not our interests grow into ever widening
circles, so that we do not stagnate. The highest friendship
demands growth. "It must be progressive as life itself is
progressive." Friends must walk together; they cannot long
stand still together, for that means death to friendship and
to life.
Friendship with God is the friendship of child with
parent. As an ideal son grows daily into closer relationship
with his father, so we may grow into closer love with God by
widening into his interests, and thinking his thoughts and
sharing his enterprises.
. . . . . .
Far more than any other device of God to create love was
the cross where the lovingest person the world has known
hangs loving through all his pain. That cross has become the
symbol of religion and of love for a third of the world
because it touches the deepest depths of human love.
All I have said is mere words, until one sets Out helping
God right wrongs, helping God help the helpless, loving and
talking it over with God. Then there comes a great sense of
the close up, warm intimate heart of reality. God simply
creeps in and you know he is here in your heart. He
has become your friend by working along with you.
So if anybody were to ask me how to find God I should say
at once, hunt out the deepest need you can find and forget
all about your own comfort while you try to meet that need.
Talk to God about it, and--he will be there. You will know
it.
January 2, 1932
Learn to hold God by the hand and rest
In school a teacher lays out work for his pupils. I
resolve to accept each situation of this year as God's
layout for that hour, and never to lament that it is a very
commonplace or disappointing task. One can pour something
divine into every situation.
One of the mental characteristics against which I have
rebelled most is the frequency of my "blank spells" when I
cannot think of anything worth writing, and sometimes cannot
remember names. Henceforth I resolve to regard these as
God's signal that I am to stop and listen. Sometimes you
want to talk to your son, and sometimes you want to hold him
tight in silence. God is that way with us, he wants to hold
still with us in silence. Here is something we can share
with all the people in the world. They cannot all be
brilliant or rich or beautiful.
They cannot all even dream beautiful dreams like God
gives some of us. They cannot all enjoy music. Their hearts
do not all burn with love. But everybody can learn to hold
God by the hand and rest. And when God is ready to speak the
fresh thoughts of heaven will flow in like a crystal spring.
Everybody rests at the end of the day, what a world gain if
everybody could rest in the waiting arms of the Father, and
listen until he whispers.
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