3. Develop a morning routine that is adaptable.
Taking the crazy mornings into account, knowing that they will come and trying to be ready for them may mean that you develop morning habits that are flexible. Try to create a routine that can expand into more than an hour if you have it, or collapse into just 10 minutes, or even less, when love requires it.
For example, you might consider a simple pattern like this: Begin with Bible reading, move into meditation, polish with prayer. On days when you have extended time, you can read and meditate on God’s word longer, and include journaling, and take time to put some rich passage to memory, and linger in prayer, from adoration to confession to thanksgiving to supplication. But on a crazy morning, you can get through the reading-meditation-prayer sequence in just a few brief minutes if needed.
Instead of reading all the assigned passages in your Bible-reading plan, just take one short psalm or little Gospel account or small section of an epistle. Look for one manifestation of God’s goodness in the passage, and meditate on that goodness being for you in Jesus and try to press the truth into your heart. Then pray that truth in light of your day and the needs at hand, along with any other spontaneous requests on your mind that morning.
If time is really tight, at least pause briefly to pray, and seek to carry a spirit of prayer and dependence into the day. Christ can meet you on the move. Express to God that it seems circumstances and the call of love are leading you right into life today. Acknowledge that you can’t earn his help with a long season of meditation and prayer, and ask that he would show himself strong today by being your strength when you feel spiritually weak.
Actually, it’s often the crazy days when we feel most dependent, and our sense of weakness is good for God showing us his strength. “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).
4. Look for God’s provision through others.
The means of grace aren’t simply personal. They are profoundly corporate. Even our personal Bible meditation and prayer are deeply shaped by our lives in community, and by those who have taught us intentionally. Personal Bible intake and prayer can be powerful—and they are habits of grace worth pursuing daily—but so can a reminder of God’s grace from a spouse or friend or fellow believer. Don’t neglect the power of fellowship as a means of God’s grace.
If time alone with Jesus just isn’t happening on this crazy morning, be on special lookout for some morsel of gospel food from conversation with someone who loves Jesus. If it’s a crazy day for both of you, perhaps some quick conversation, pointing each other to Christ and his goodness toward us, would produce some food for you both that you otherwise wouldn’t have had.
5. Evaluate later what you might learn for next time.
When the crazy morning and day has passed, seek to learn how you can grow in anticipating and tackling these in the future. If you stayed up too late to watch some show or movie needlessly, the lesson may be, very simply, to plan ahead better next time. (Often the biggest battle is merely getting to sleep on time.) But sometimes there’s really nothing to learn. This is just life in this age.
The crazy days will come. And there are seasons of life, like with a newborn at home, where all bets are off, and it’s just a crazy season. But with a little intentionality, and with a modest plan in place, you can learn to navigate these days, and even walk with greater dependence on God, knowing full well that it’s not the ideal execution of our morning habits of grace that secures his favor and blessing.
You can commune with Christ in the crazy days.
This article originally appeared here.
