#27. Feeding on the Bible When Our Meals are Interrupted
Motherhood is a time when we are burning stored spiritual fat. It forces us to spend those cells of past nourishment in moment by moment trust and obedience. Those of us who have banked up a wonderful store of Bible teaching in the past have probably enjoyed more energy in, than energy out. But when Jesus spoke about abiding in him, that included not only hearing his words, but having his words live in us as we obey them. The moment by moment strain of raising children, instead of being something which gets in the way of abiding in Jesus, is the place where we can rigorously practice doing what his word tells us.
Feeding is more enjoyable than the exertion. Most of us love to eat more than we love to sweat. Stretching our body’s systems beyond their usual state is not pure joy while it’s happening. The thing I hate about proper exercise, is how weak it makes you feel. You wobble at the edge of what your body can do. We don’t like being reminded of the limits of ourselves. I feel much healthier and stronger when I am sitting on a couch reading a book. But the couch is not making me stronger.
We’re likely to feel more godly, serene and spurred on at a leisurely women’s weekend away, or without the children during the sermon, or in the adults’ Bible study. Feasting on the banquet of God’s word in the company of sweet grown ups feels more holy when the children aren’t around. The hours of relay—from carrots to potty to laundry to that smell in the fridge to the Lego dispute to the trampoline collision to the picture book to the bandaids to the dust on the shelf to the dog who escaped to the phone call about the forgotten deadline—the days of desperate dependence feel less sacred, but they’re the gymnasium of our obedience. These are the moments for using what we know, working out how what we know changes what we do. Our doctrinal positions get tested as we take them for a run in real time, among real people who really depend on us. While we may have studied about our dependence on God, he is moment by moment making us feel our dependence on him, as we routinely come to the end of our strength and competence. The strained conditions which we think are hindering our growth are the tools the Master Gardener is pruning his vine with. Pruning to bring about that fruitful growth.
Bible study was the most intoxicating experience I had in my university days. I had grown up in church culture, familiar with the phrases of the Bible, cutting and pasting nifty verses from the time I could hold scissors. When I started uni, I found myself in a Bible study group which was looking at Deuteronomy for the term. This was a novelty: studying an Old Testament book (I had assumed Christians had grown out of the Old Testament); and reading a whole book of the Bible methodically. I always had plenty to say, so when questions were asked, I rattled off my ideas. The hinge of change turned for me when someone gently followed up my words with, “Where in the passage did you get that idea from?”. I hadn’t realised the page in front of me was saying some things and not others.
Those were years of realising, that despite growing up in a church culture, I knew very little about God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. I desperately wanted to know, so it was a time of rigorous Bible study. The difficulty, joy and growth of that time was on a different scale from any other time in my life. It was a season of storing spiritual fat. It’s good to do that when we can. But, when that has been our privilege, we might imagine that the only way we can grow as a Christian is when we have a lifestyle that allows hours for uninterrupted, deep, attentive and methodical Bible study. We think that anything less doesn’t count. Most Christians who have ever lived haven’t had that privilege. We’ve come to think an anomaly (cloistered, uninterrupted, scholarly Bible study) is essential and a norm. Bible reading is essential and normal, but the serenity isn’t. It isn’t just mothers who have interrupted Bible readings. Any Christian who has had to labour for their subsistence, or flee from persecution, or work hard at planting and nurturing a church while working for their livelihood, has been under strain. Our maternal difficulties are not that exceptional. It’s normal for Christians to be reading the Bible in the middle of hard and cluttered lives; for that reading to feel piecemeal at times. Many of the finest tomes of Christian doctrine (what looks like cloistered scholarship) was written in times of—and in response to—duress (Calvin’s Institutes and the Westminster Confession of Faith are two I have given particular attention to, but there are many).
When we welcome children, we welcome a life of variables and interruptions. The greenhouse God sometimes uses to bring about our growth will not be what is typical most of the time with small children. And because it is not routinely possible now, we know it is not God’s provision for now. If we needed it, he would continue to provide it. That doesn’t mean he hasn’t provided anything in its place. God is Master of the conditions we are living in. We need to stop straining after another time, a time Jesus isn’t giving us now and use what he has given us.
We can be sure that God has provided whatever we need to grow to maturity now, in the middle of the spilled milk and toilet training. If we can only read the Bible in unpredictable moments snatched between tasks, then God is more than capable of making those morsels nourish us. We like the deep, leisurely, uninterrupted feeding, but there are times when God chooses to fill us up on what looks like very little. Like feeding thousands with an armful of bread. We can always be sure that the Lord will provide what we need to trust and obey him in the present. If interrupted Bible meals are the norm for now, and to have anything more would mean ignoring the obedience he’s called us to, then we can trust that the fragments will do. Our frustrated attempts at a longer Bible reading can still deliver sustenance the Lord has for us today. So, if campus Bible study is not an option for now, what is?
Pray that God would help you want to read his Bible. Then start doing it. Your feelings can catch up later. Most of our battle is desire. Often we learn to love what we habitually do.
Pray that you can read in submission to God’s word; being changed by it. It will have a transforming effect without you trying to wrangle a specific application out of every reading.
Have a Bible handy so you can take advantage of unexpected opportunities. If it helps, keep one in every room of the house and the glovebox of the car. Make sure there’s always a Bible in your nappy bag (you never know when you’ll get stuck with unexpected time on your hands). Find a cheap edition you can read easily but are happy to get dog-eared, scribbled and spilled on.
Have a Bible app on your phone and listen while you’re pottering around. Listen to the Bible while you feed your baby. YouVersion is free and has an audio option.
If you have a kindle or reading tablet, have your Bible on it. It was a lifesaver for me when I had a newborn baby on an IV drip (ie. awkward feeding where you end up wishing you had eight arms). A kindle meant I could hold the Bible and turn the pages with one hand once I was stranded sitting for long feeds in an awkward position. Never have I been more grateful for a technological device!
Ask your husband if he could read some Bible aloud to you while you’re doing that late night feed. It doesn’t need to be a big, outstanding event.
If a friend comes to visit, your hands are full and your eyes are heavy, ask them to read a Psalm aloud to you. You don’t need to dissect the passage together. Just listen. When you go to visit a friend, casually ask if you can read a Psalm with her, “Hey, before I go, why don’t we read Psalm 27 together?”. You might have children tugging at your legs. It might be punctuated by squarks, but it is still Bible.
Read the Bible aloud to your kids. God is very clever at nourishing all kinds of people and ages and needs with one meal. His word will do what each of you need for where each of you are at. Listen as a family, every day. Short and sweet. (More on reading the Bible with kids in a future post).
If you’re especially tired, choose to spend a season drinking deeply from one spring. Choose one book of the Bible to read over a longer period of time, over and over again. Get to know it really well by having it open nearby wherever you are and reading it repeatedly. When the toddler is occupied for five minutes, pick it up and keep reading. By reading one book over and again, even a few minutes at a time, you will come to know it in a new way. The gap between our Bible life and everything else closes.
Read with attention. Even if it is a two minute reading session. Take hold of the words in a way that you can retell it to someone else, even if you’re not sure what they mean yet. Our minds keep hold of things we give our full attention to and then put into words.
Tell your baby or toddler what you just read. They will not understand the depths of what you are saying, but you will be in the habit of talking with them about the Bible. Before you know it, they will be talking to you. Talking about God’s word, while we’re doing our ordinary work is the ancient basis for family discipleship, after all.
If no one else is there, narrate to yourself. The mental activity of retelling what you’ve read moves what you’ve read into longer term memory. This practice of narration is an old one. I have come into using it through reading the philosophy and method of educationalist Charlotte Mason. She says that the act of reading and then retelling makes that idea a lasting possession.
Help yourself pay attention by using a pen. Underline words and ideas which seem to be repeated. Draw arrows between ideas which connect to other ideas. Jot down your questions (you might notice the passage ends up answering these questions for you, in time).
Have your children around when you read the Bible, even if they climb on your lap and make your notes look bumpy. One of the most powerful motivators I had for reading the Bible as a kid, was seeing my mum sitting up in bed, with her morning coffee and her Bible open.
When you do come into those strange in-between months, where one child is a little more independent and the next baby hasn’t yet been born (usually the time when we think we could cope with going back to work or starting a university course, only to go into shock when our capacity shrinks again in three months time); in those windows of relative calm, use the extra space to lay down some stores for when things are intense again. Take your Bible outside while the toddler plays in the sandpit. Get a few months of the Bible Reading Challenge in.
Take an inventory of your time. Often we feel we have less time for the Bible because it evaporates when we’re scrolling screens or binge watching twenty seasons of our favourite high school sitcom.
As we live within the limitations Jesus has given us, as we learn to abide in him and his words abide in us while we’re in that situation, a couple of things might happen: 1. We might stop telling each other that we’re too busy to read the Bible. 2. We might stop feeling we need to arrange special situations (away from the kids) to read it. 3. We might start to enjoy a lively experience of God speaking into the daily traffic of our life. 4. We’ll mature as Bible knowledge gets converted into Bible living. 5. Our children will be brought into the vital experience of everyday Christianity, which is one of God’s most ordinary means of bringing people into the kingdom of Jesus. More on children learning to abide in Jesus soon.
“Now this art of telling back is Education and is very enriching. We all practise it, we go over in our minds the points of a conversation, a lecture, a sermon, an article, and we are so made that only those ideas and arguments which we go over are we able to retain. Desultory reading or hearing is entertaining and refreshing, but is only educative here and there as our attention is strongly arrested. Further, we not only retain but realise, understand, what we thus go over. Each incident stands out, every phrase acquires new force, each link in the argument is riveted, in fact we have performed THE ACT OF KNOWING, and that which we have read, or heard, becomes a part of ourselves, it is assimilated after the due rejection of waste matter.” Charlotte Mason (Philosophy of Education p.292)
