Ask · The Church & Christian Life
What is a quiet time?
The short answer
A quiet time is the modern name for a regular, unhurried time alone with God in Scripture and prayer. The phrase itself is not in the Bible and the practice is not commanded as a formula; the pattern behind it is biblical: Jesus withdrew to desolate places to pray, Daniel prayed three times a day, and the Psalms bless meditation on God's word day and night. Treat it as a helpful means of grace, not a law or a measure of devotion.
The fuller answer
Be clear about the phrase first, since honesty about it protects the practice. Quiet time is modern shorthand, coined in evangelical usage in the last century or so, and you will not find it, or a command prescribing its length, time of day or contents, anywhere in Scripture. That matters because a helpful habit quietly promoted into a divine requirement becomes a burden and then a badge: people begin measuring their standing with God by a streak. The Bible does not do that, and neither should we. What the Bible does show, repeatedly, is God's people deliberately making room to be with him, and that pattern is worth imitating in whatever form fits a real life.
But his delight is in the Law of the LORD, and on His law he meditates day and night.
Psalm 1:2 (BSB)
The pattern itself is plain. Mark's Gospel, in the middle of Jesus' busiest season, records that rising very early, while it was still dark, he went out to a desolate place and prayed, and his disciples had to come and find him. Daniel kept fixed times of prayer three times a day, on his knees, at an open window, and kept them when they became dangerous. The first Psalm blesses the person whose delight is in the law of the LORD and who meditates on it day and night. Solitude, Scripture, prayer, regularity: the ingredients are all here, whether or not any single passage assembles them into a programme.
Early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up and went out to a solitary place to pray.
Mark 1:35 (BSB)
So build yours from the ingredients, sized to your actual life. Choose a time your day can protect, often the morning, as with Jesus, though parents of small children and shift workers should take the hour that exists rather than mourn the one that does not. Bring a Bible portion, read and pray over it, bring the day ahead and the people in it to God by name, and sit quietly long enough to stop performing. Ten honest minutes beat an elaborate hour abandoned by March. And on the days it does not happen, God has not moved. Resume tomorrow, as his people always have.
Now when Daniel learned that the document had been signed, he went into his house, where the windows of his upper room opened toward Jerusalem, and three times a day he got down on his knees, prayed, and gave thanks to his God, just as he had done before.
Daniel 6:10 (BSB)
Daniel's habit shows the practice under pressure, which is where habits prove what they are. When the decree forbidding prayer was signed, Daniel went to his house, knelt down as usual at his open windows, and prayed and gave thanks as he had done previously, three times a day. Previously is the telling word: the crisis did not create the pattern, it revealed one built in ordinary days. Build yours in peacetime, without drama or display, and it will be there, as Daniel's was, on the days when everything depends on having somewhere already worn smooth to kneel.
Sources
- Berean Standard Bible (BSB)
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