A Quiet Confession

I have a confession: I hardly ever had a Quiet Time when my kids were little. 

I capitalize “Quiet Time” (as opposed to quiet time which I never had then, but now have in abundance) because it is a practice the western world has crafted and created, calling it, essentially though not actually, a requirement of a good Christian’s life. 

Please hear me: I do think that Christians need to quiet their souls so they can hear the still small voice of God, and I do think that can often happen more easily in a regimented time of Bible reading and prayer. But I also think that the Western evangelical formula for how this time should look is creating false guilt in the minds of many–especially young mamas. 

When I was a mom of four young kids, I loved (and still love) God and wanted to learn more about him by spending time in his presence, but my practical life made achieving time alone–for anything– nearly impossible (even showering alone was a luxury; most days, at least one child would lay on the bath mat right outside of the clear glass shower door). I knew this Christian “requirement” of a Quiet Time wasn’t really a rule, but it felt like one to me, and I felt ashamed that I had so much trouble making it happen. I added this shame onto the other guilt I felt about my exhaustion and my impatience with my children’s excessively long bedtime prayers.

The familiar evangelical term, Quiet Time, is a relatively new idea that gained traction in the last hundred years or so–with good intention. For millennia, the masses were illiterate, only hearing scripture read out loud to them.The centuries-long labor pains of illiteracy and inaccessibility made personal Bible reading impossible, but with the advent of the printing press and wide-spread literacy, a more individualistic and regimented Christian faith was born. 

The freedom that we now have to read God’s Word on our own is an unbelievable privilege of the present modern era. And the idea of having a solitary time in prayer and Bible study is a thrilling prospect attainable for all over the course of our lives as spiritual pilgrims. This arc of our hopefully-long lives will include more focused times of devotion (as I had in college as a hungry new believer), and very busy times–like young motherhood–where consistent Quiet Times may be difficult to achieve, and the “slower-mornings” seasons of the empty nest and  retirement. 

As modern evangelical believers who want to walk the way of Jesus, I think we can reformulate the rigid prescription of Quiet Time and lighten the burden of guilt for many. By creating a “system” for meeting with God, we have removed some of the spontaneity of our faith–which is to be child-like and awe-inspiring. How can we get that back? By removing some of the “rules.” If we can learn to commune with God by singing hymns in the shower (even–and especially– if littles are watching), by thanking him for the red birds in the blue sky as we absorb the beauty of the morning, by reading his Word out loud while babies blow bubbles in the bathtub, or by listening to the gospels as we exercise our bodies, then even when our seasons are busy, we can create rhythms in our lives that reverberate with joy, not guilt. 

In my present season of empty-nesting, I absolutely adore my consistent time with the Lord nearly every morning (and I can enjoy a long, hot, and completely private, shower whenever I desire). I don’t love the term Quiet Time, but in reality that is what I do when I meet with the Lord in the mornings over hot coffee and my Bible–I quiet my heart and mind before him so he can become greater and I can become less. My daily Quiet Time is not a requirement. God doesn’t love me any more because I followed a formula for meeting with him. God has always loved all of his children–even before they could read or have solitary time in his Word. Our disciplines don’t change God’s attitude towards us, but sometimes they can change our attitude towards him. And sometimes God can change us just as well when we look to him in desperation in busy seasons and unpredictable circumstances in our lives. 

The Bible doesn’t tell us how much time to spend reading it or how many hours we must accrue to be “holy,” but it does tell us to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” (Mark 12:30) So instead of focusing on achieving the perfect Quiet Time in every season of our lives, let’s make our ordinary days–right now–into a loud time of celebrating how much we love him.