It is half past six in the morning. Someone is shouting for a missing school sock. The kettle is boiling. The baby has decided sleep is over for everyone. You had planned, as you do most nights, to get up early and spend quiet time with the Lord before the house woke. The house, as usual, woke first.
Many believers carry a low-level guilt about this. We know we are meant to draw near to God. We picture it as something that happens in stillness: a quiet room, an open Bible, an hour of unhurried prayer. And then there is the life we actually live, full of lunches to pack and bills to pay and a teenager who needs a lift.
A few verses in Genesis may help.
The man who walked, with children
Enoch gets only a handful of lines in Scripture, but they are unforgettable. “Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him” (Genesis 5:24, NKJV). Hebrews adds that before he was taken, he had this testimony: that he pleased God (Hebrews 11:5).
It is easy to imagine Enoch as a kind of hermit, detached from ordinary things. But read the verse just before. Genesis 5:22 says that after he became the father of Methuselah, Enoch walked with God three hundred years, “and had sons and daughters.”
The walk with God and the raising of a family happen in the same sentence. Enoch’s closeness to God did not take him away from the household. It went on right in the middle of it: through feeding children, settling quarrels, working to put food on the table and doing all the things that fill a home.
Walking is a helpful picture. It is not sitting still. It is moving, going somewhere, often talking while you go. You can walk with someone to the market, to work, to the standpipe. Walking with God may be less about finding an hour of silence and more about keeping company with him through the ordinary day.
Mary at his feet, in a busy house
That does not mean stillness is unimportant. The Gospels also give us Mary of Bethany sitting at Jesus’s feet, listening, while her sister Martha rushes around preparing a meal (Luke 10:38-42). Jesus gently tells Martha that Mary has chosen the good part.
Notice where this happens, though. Not in the temple. In a home, with guests, with work waiting in the kitchen. Mary’s nearness to Jesus was not a retreat from the house. It was a decision, in the middle of a busy house, about what mattered most in that moment.
So perhaps the two pictures belong together. There will be times to stop, sit and listen, and they are precious. And there is the long daily walk, where we keep turning our hearts towards God while our hands are full.
Near to all who call
Psalm 145:18 is a great comfort to anyone who feels their devotional life is too scrappy to count: “The LORD is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth” (NKJV).
All who call. Not all who manage an hour before dawn. Not all who have a quiet room. The mother whispering “Lord, help me” as she stirs the porridge is calling on him. So is the father praying under his breath in traffic on the way to a job he dreads, and the grandmother who hums a hymn while she folds the washing. If it is in truth, he is near.
Small ways to walk with God at home
- Tie prayer to the routines you already have. Pray as you unlock the front door, while the rice cooks, as you switch off the lights at night.
- Keep a verse where your eyes fall. On the fridge, above the sink, by the mirror where you tie your tie or do your hair.
- Let the children hear you. A short prayer in the car on the school run teaches more than a long lecture.
- Protect one small still moment. Five minutes on the back step with a cup of tea and a psalm may be more realistic, and more sustainable, than an hour you never manage.
- Turn chores into companionship. Sweeping the yard or washing up can be a time to talk to God about the people in the house.
James writes, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you” (James 4:8, NKJV). The promise is not reserved for those with tidy lives and quiet houses. It is for anyone who takes a step towards him, even in slippers, even with a baby on one hip.
For reflection
- Where in your normal daily routine could you practise walking with God, rather than waiting for a perfect quiet moment?
- What would the people in your household say it looks like when you are close to God?
Lord, you are near to all who call on you. Here I am in the noise and the rush, calling. Walk with me through this house today, through every chore and every conversation, and let the people I love see that I have been with you. Amen.
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