Prayer & Worship
I sit down with a Bible and a coffee and genuinely do not know what to do for the next twenty minutes. What does a quiet time actually look like?
“But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night.”
The psalm that opens the whole collection describes a person whose delight is in God's instruction and who chews it over day and night. The Hebrew word translated meditate is used elsewhere of a lion growling over prey and of muttering under your breath. It is not emptying the mind. It is worrying away at a few lines until they give something up, slowly and out loud.
“And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”
Martha is hosting Jesus and doing genuinely necessary work while her sister sits and listens. Jesus does not scold her for cooking, he names what is driving her: she is anxious and pulled in several directions at once. The one thing needful was not more effort but attention. For anyone who feels a quiet time ought to be productive, this is the correction. Sitting there is the activity.
A path forward
Try a simple shape: read ten verses, write down one sentence that struck you and one question you are left with, then pray about that sentence for five minutes. That is a whole quiet time.
Work through one short book rather than dipping at random. Mark, Philippians, or one psalm a day, gives you somewhere to be tomorrow.
Put the phone in another room. Most quiet time is not lost to a lack of devotion, it is lost to a screen within arm's reach.
Closing verse
“Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart: for I am called by thy name, O LORD God of hosts.”
- Jeremiah 15:16
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