Fitting prayer and Bible reading into the chaos of real life

Bedtime is my favourite time of day. The irony, right? The place I least wanted to be when I was a child is now the place I absolutely cannot wait to get back to as soon as I get up in the morning. Why? Because the rest of the day is a chaotic mishmash of child organisation, work, dog maintenance and housekeeping. It’s sort of organised but it seems to fly by without any control or direction from me. By the time I get back to my little den-under-the-doona I can barely work out where the time went.

In amongst the chaos though, it is hugely important to carve out times to work on my relationship with God. I use that phrase deliberately because ‘Bible reading and prayer’ can be mistaken for more things on the to-do list. Rather, it is working on my relationship with my Creator by communicating with him, getting to know him and allowing the space and time for us to be together—so that I can be shaped by him, and re-orient my heart, soul and strength through that relationship.

Be content with the chaos

My umbrella approach to carving out time is to be content with the chaos. There will always be things you could do but we need to prioritise the things we should do.

Sometimes that means leaving the dirty dishes to be dealt with later and stopping to have devotional time instead.

Where we live is a home, not a show house. Our view of what our house should look like  can be affected by the curated version of other people’s lives that we see on social media. That carefully crafted version of how things ‘should be’ can end up shaping how we build our house rather than the Lord and his priorities, in which case we are labouring in vain (Psalm 127:1). If we are to let the Lord build the house, sometimes that means being content with the chaos in order to prioritise more important needs.

With two teenage children, I feel like I don’t have a home so much as a café so there are always dishes and laundry to contend with. But this is a home that is built in the Lord, not a show home to advertise aspirational perfection. The dishes and laundry will get done eventually. Taking care of my relationship with God cannot be put off because the longer I go without praying and sitting in Scripture, the further away from God I drift and the louder I let the world get in my life. And that doesn’t just impact me and my housekeeping, it impacts everyone else around me, first and foremost my kids.

Instead of ‘quiet time’ try ‘all the time’

Sometimes carving out time is hard though. I feel a constant pressure to find ‘quiet time’ in amongst a day which is anything but. So how about leaning into that? If there is never a quiet moment for quiet time, we can try ‘all the time’. In Deuteronomy 11, God taught the Israelites how to fix his words in their hearts and minds by tying them on their hands and binding them on their foreheads, talking about them when at home or walking along the road, and writing them on their doorframes and gates (Deuteronomy 11:18–20).

For us that might mean praying while we’re doing the most mundane of things: brushing our teeth, waiting for the kettle to boil, emptying the dishwasher, preparing the kids’ lunch boxes, sitting in traffic. I know that by their nature the prayers will be quick, but that’s not the point. The point is inviting God into the routine and mundane. The point is training ourselves to be in conversation with God throughout the whole day. And when we are trained to find God in the small things, we’ll instinctively show up in prayer for the big things.

Mix it up

With Bible reading, I have tried lots of different things. Not because I keep failing (and that is very unhelpful language when it comes to discipleship), but because my world keeps changing as I get older and my kids get older. Just as I change my diet to fit my age, or I buy my kids new clothes because they no longer fit the old ones, I try new ways of being in the word. When my diet no longer works because my hormones are changing I don’t give up eating. When my kids have outgrown their clothes I don’t just leave them to run around in the buff. So when my approach to Bible reading is becoming difficult because my life is changing, I don’t just leave it for another day when my life has changed back. That is not going to happen, so I need to let my Bible reading evolve with my life.

The things that have worked the best in my devotional life have been those that are most adaptable. First, I have a Bible-in-one-year Bible which gives me a bit of Old Testament, New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs. It takes about ten minutes to read and allows me to take a breath with a cup of tea, currently after the dinner rush. Previously it was in the morning but that stopped working as my kids got older and needed crowbarring out of their beds to get to school. Then it was as work finished but that became less effective when I changed roles and had no clear ‘stop work’ time. So now it is after dinner when things have quieted down. I’m sure the time will change again, but that’s the point. The habit is doing it at all, not having a special time and place. I know some people do have that, and it’s amazing! But in the chaos of where my life is, I need something more flexible.

In previous times, when work has been absolutely crazy, I listed to an audio version of the Bible. I used Dwell Bible app or You Version which has an audio function. That way I could listen in the car or while doing laundry, when even ten minutes to sit down and read seemed out of reach.

In other seasons, I’ve had more time and have been able to pick a book to work through with a Bible study. I have used the For You series from the Good Book Company or some of the free Bible studies in the You Version app. I love those times and have learned so much by them. But expecting quiet time to always be like that sets ourselves up for failure. It can even turn quiet time itself into a bit of a sacred cow.

At the same time, if, in trying not to idolise quiet time, I make it too quick and hurried, the time I spend with God gets drained of all meaning. So I’m always working out how to flex and adapt so that I can balance finding a dedicated time with keeping the time manageable … and meaningful.

Being with God every day is important. If I am to live as a child of God and grow in Christlikeness, I need to be in the word and prayer more than Sundays. Prayer and Bible reading anchor our day. I find if I haven’t been reading and praying I feel more adrift, almost lopsided. But by being content with the chaos, and always adapting to life, I can find ways to be with my Father, creating the space for me to know him, remain anchored in him and be shaped by him.

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Ruth Baker is a single mum of two boys. She blogs at ‘Meet me where I am’ and is the author of Are We There Yet? (ArkHouse Press, 2020) and a contributor to Parenting in God's Family: Biblical Wisdom for Everyday Issues

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