Six months ago, my husband Dave and I changed our morning routine. Previously, we had tried various strategies for daily prayer and Bible reading, fitting them around work and children into the cracks and crevices of the day. For me, this meant doing it when the children were resting, or otherwise occupied, or asleep at night. Some of these strategies worked better than others. Finally, though, when none of these cleverer approaches delivered the consistency and quality of time that we needed, we decided to bite the bullet and go back to the old-fashioned, unoriginal approach: we would simply get up early enough to take turns to look after the kids while the other parent shut the bedroom door and spent some decent time alone in Bible reading and prayer.
It gave me pangs of guilt to start with: I often feel a little self-indulgent, taking some precious time to go off on my own to read the Bible and pray, when there’s so much other ‘Martha’ stuff that needs doing around the house. But now I had the added guilt that came with the fact I was so brazenly shutting the door in the children’s faces, and choosing Bible reading and prayer over extra time with them. It felt almost cruel—especially when there were tears being shed on the other side of the door!
Then the other morning we got a first glimpse of the kindness in the cruelty. Dave was about to go and read his Bible, and Jacob (our five-year-old, who has just started reading on his own) announced that he wanted to read his Bible too. So he went to his room with his Bible and shut the door. He was still reading when I got back from my walk 20 minutes later, (and he announced to me that he had read “Adonijah makes himself king” and “The plan to kill Jesus”. The next step is to get him some sort of Bible reading plan, I think!).
Jacob reads books all the time, and enjoys reading his Bible, but it was the door-shutting that made this time stand out, and it reminded me of how much our actions and routines communicate to our children. Of course, early mornings and door-shutting are not the only way to achieve the same result (or to communicate the same message); Susannah Wesley famously managed to do it with an apron over the head! But in our case, I’m thankful for this accidental lesson taught to the kids, and I’m starting to feel a little less guilty in the mornings when the door clicks shut and I experience my tiny, daily taste of Luke 14:26.
5 “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
Apologies for a totally random observation, but it seems to me that your ‘door-shutting’ behaviour has been well and truly rewarded by your heavenly Father, who sees in secret. But it has only happened because your son knew exactly what you were doing!
Better stop thinking—my brain is starting to get caught in a paradoxical loop.