“One evening as he (Isaac) was taking a walk out in the fields, meditating, he looked up and saw the camels coming.” (Genesis 24:63 NLT).

Lettie Cowman (1870-1960) was a saintly missionary to Japan. She is one of the ‘dead authors’ who speak to me from antiquity. Her classic and famous devotional (Streams in the Desert, 1926) speaks to my heart and head on many days.

Like David and his slingshot, I am the Goliath who needs the reality checks of Lettie’s small stones thrown at my hard head early in the morning. On December 24, Christmas Eve, Lettie hit me right between the eyes!

She opened her devotional with, “We should be better Christians if we were more alone; we should do more if we attempted less, and spent more time in retirement, and quiet waiting upon God.” The retirement word got me. I am retired, but still busy. Too busy.

I have been addicted to activity most of my life. I am guilty of not enough ‘alone time’. I always knew that getting up early for ‘alone time’ with God is ideal. Perhaps I did better than most, but still, it was not nearly enough. There were too many days when I running from before dawn to midnight. I never ran a ‘business’— but I sure ran a ‘busyness’. And it haunts me even now. I mean— even this ‘storytelling’ and this website keeps me ‘busy’.

I can remember in the 90’s proudly saying that there are surely better lawyers than me but none busier. At one time, when I was rocking and rolling, I was a full-time Senator, a full-time lawyer, and a full-time International President of CBMC (a ministry to business and professional people). Instead of really doing my job, and doing it well, looking back I realize that I was often hiring other people to do what I should have been doing.

And managing them made me even busier.

There are many examples of my sinful ‘busy’ but one that sticks in my mind was a jury trial in Danville, Kentucky. I went to trial on a Monday morning knowing that if it all worked out, the case would end on a Thursday, and I could catch a plane that night to be in Norway for a CBMC meeting on Friday afternoon. This was sheer insanity scheduling. I made the closing argument, left the courtroom, sped to the airport, and flew overnight to Europe. I called a law partner when I landed to find out if we won or lost. My client must have surely been appalled that his lawyer was on an airplane when he should have been holding his hand as the jury came back.

Or another trip to Uganda. I was asleep at midnight when a reporter from a Kentucky newspaper woke me up to tell me that a political opponent had filed an ethics complaint against me, threatening me with jail for violating some code which I did not even know existed. My poor wife Sue woke up the next day to a front-page story that Senator Philpot “might” be in trouble- maybe even a felony. Looking back, I was out of control with going “here and there”. Mr. Big-Shot. Running to the state capitol one day. Dashing off to court the next day. Preaching around the world the next day.

Saving the world and losing my own soul.

I almost quit playing golf during years. Actually, I didn’t quit- I just didn’t have time for it. And I sure didn’t have time for a leisurely walk in the evening on the back nine as the sun was setting.

And now- in retirement- I am still trying to break the bad habits of “busyness”. I need help.

So, I woke up on Christmas Eve, 2023. I opened Lettie Cowman’s devotional as usual. It seems best to just let her own works speak.

Listen to my dear friend Lettie (bold emphasis is mine):

“We should be better Christians if we were more alone; we should do more if we attempted less, and spent more time in retirement, and quiet waiting upon God. The world is too much with us; we are afflicted with the idea that we are doing nothing unless we are fussily running to and fro; we do not believe in ‘the calm retreat, the silent shade.’ As a people, we are of a very practical turn of mind; as someone has said, ‘we believe in having all our irons in the fire, and consider the time not spent between the anvil and the fire as lost, or much the same as lost.’ Yet no time is more profitably spent than that which is set apart for quiet musing, for talking with God, for looking up to Heaven. We cannot have too many of these open spaces in life, hours in which the soul is left accessible to any sweet thought or influence it may please God to send.

**My wife Sue alone on the course at Brora in Scotland**

‘Reverie,’ it has been said, ‘is the Sunday of the mind.’ Let us often in these days give our mind a ‘Sunday,’ in which it will do no manner of work but simply lie still, and look upward, and spread itself out before the Lord like Gideon’s fleece, to be soaked and moistened with the dews of Heaven. Let there be intervals when we shall do nothing, think nothing, plan nothing, but just lay ourselves on the green lap of nature and ‘rest awhile.’… City men cannot do better than follow the example of Isaac, and, as often as they can, get away from the fret and fever of life into fields. Wearied with the heat and din, the noise and bustle, communion with nature is very grateful; it will have a calming, healing influence.

A walk through the fields, a saunter by the seashore or across the daisy-sprinkled meadows, will purge your life from sordidness, and make the heart beat with new joy and hope.

‘The little cares that fretted me, I lost them yesterday… Out in the fields with God.’”

So, have you lately laid yourself “on the green lap of nature… out in the fields with God”?

Doesn’t that sound like a walk down a fairway with just four clubs and the good Lord whispering in your ear?

This surely explains why Sue and I love to get away to Scotland for lots of ‘walks through the fields (fairways if you’re a golfer) and saunters by the seashore (links golf)’.

But even if you are too smart to play golf, a good walk alone anywhere may do the job. The point is to get away from the ‘busyness’ and into the beauty of ‘nothingness’.

Lettie Cowman is not the only wise woman to give such advice. When Mother Teresa established her Missionaries of Charity, she had lots of rules for the Sisters. Number 37 was all about this ‘nothingness’: “The Sisters shall spend one day in every week, one week in every month, one month in every year, one year in every six years in the motherhouse, where in contemplation and penance together with solitude she can gather in the spiritual strength, which she might have used in the service of the poor. When these Sisters are at home, the others will take their place in the Mission field.” Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, Page 345 (2007 by Brian Kolodiejchuk).

I’ve added this up. It’s about 150 days a year to do ‘nothing’ in the motherhouse, not even counting the full year off every six years, a true Sabbatical- a full year to recuperate. It is Mother Teresa’s version of the Old Testament “Jubilee” found in Leviticus — the ‘super-Sabbath’. We Americans think weekends and two-week vacation is plenty.

And finally, what did Isaac find as he walked in that field? He found Rebekah “and she became his wife. He loved her very much.” (Genesis 24:67). God’s greatest gifts may be waiting for us “in the fields with God” doing what seems to be nothing, or in someplace like the motherhouse, being quiet enough to hear the Voice.

For me in 2024, my motherhouse will be more walks alone with four clubs on the ‘green lap of nature’.