24/7 - Madame Guyon

1648–1717

From a historical perspective, many other women might be more significant than Madame Jeanne-Marie Guyon, a French mystic. But this is a devotional book as well as a history book, and we’re indebted to Guyon for opening up new understandings of Christian spirituality. She has had her detractors, then and now—the language of personal experience can seem suspicious—but Guyon was both persistent and sweet spirited in her response.

“Beloved reader,” she wrote in the preface to A Short and Easy Method of Prayer, “peruse this little tract with an humble, sincere and candid spirit, and not with an inclination to cavil and criticise, and you will not fail to reap some degree of profit from it. It was written with a hearty desire that you might wholly devote yourself to God.” She went on to say that all she was trying to do was “to invite the simple and the childlike to approach their Father, who delights in the humble confidence of His children.”

That invitation is still needed today. For many, prayer and Bible reading are spiritual chores. Yes, I ought to do more of all that, we think, but it’s so hard to find time. Guyon suggests a different process. When we become “uncentred,” she says, “it is of immediate importance to turn again gently and sweetly inward; and thus we may learn to preserve the spirit and unction of prayer throughout the day.” She emphasizes the need to make prayer our normal mode of living, not some special task, “for if prayer and recollection were wholly confined to any appointed half-hour, or hour, we should reap but little fruit.”

Madame Guyon was living three centuries too early, but we think she would love smartphones, at least the idea of them. They epitomize the kind of nonstop, 24/7 access that Guyon was describing. No longer do we have to turn on a computer and “go online”—we can be continually connected to the Internet. In the same way, we can be continually connected to our loving, living God, involving him in every aspect of our lives. We don’t need to “go to prayer” if every moment is a prayer.

The LORD is in his holy Temple. Let all the earth be silent before him.

Habakkuk 2:20