Well · Faith

My Phone Was My Distraction in the Mornings. I'm 62, I've Kept a Quiet Time for Thirty Years, and Most Days I Couldn't Tell You What I'd Read.

Marion has kept her quiet time at 5 AM since 1981. When I asked her how, she answered me in one sentence at the church kitchen sink, without taking her hands out of the dishwater.

By Margaret L.

Reader contributor, North Carolina

Published November 4, 2026

Listen to this article · 13 min

If you've kept a quiet time for years and still lose it most mornings, give me a few minutes. I'm 62, I've sat at my kitchen table with my coffee and my Bible nearly every morning since my kids were small, and for a long time I couldn't have told you one verse I'd read. The earlier alarm, the one-year plan and the Bible app all let me down. What finally changed it didn't take more willpower or one extra minute. It started with one sentence from a woman who's kept her quiet time since 1981, and a small carved tag she wears on the front of her sweater. Every morning you put this off, your phone gets to you before Jesus does.

6:15, and the first thing I touch is my phone

My alarm goes at 6:15. It has since my three were little and the half hour before the house woke up was the only one that was mine. Coffee, the kitchen table, my Bible.

My alarm was my phone, so the first thing my hand touched every single day was the phone. I'd carry it down with me, pour the coffee, sit down and open my Bible to where I'd left off. Then, for a second, I'd check the weather, the church prayer chain, the baby pictures from my daughter, and that little red number on Facebook.

By 6:40 the window was going light, my Bible was lying open in front of me and I was still holding the phone. When I finally looked down I'd read the same verse three times, because my mind was at the pharmacy, or at Dan's appointment on Thursday, and I was already anxious about both. At 7:00 Dan came down and the day started, and I couldn't have told you what I read.

On Tuesdays I'd go to Bible study and nod along like I'd had my quiet time. I did have it. I sat there. Lord, forgive me, I sat there fifteen minutes with Your Word open and my mind in the Walgreens line.

I tried everything a sensible woman tries

• Getting up at 5:45 instead. That only gave me more time on the phone.
• Putting the phone out in the hall. It was my alarm, so I bought a clock, and then I worried about missing the prayer chain, and the phone was back by the bed inside a week.
• The one-year Bible plan. I'm on day 47 and it's September.
• A Bible app. You can guess. I'd open the phone to read the Bible and there was Facebook.
• Doing it properly, a whole hour, or not at all. Most mornings that meant not at all.

I started to think this was how it goes at 62, and maybe I wasn't a morning-with-Jesus person anymore. I'd get anxious about it, then feel guilty for being anxious, and round it went.

The Sunday my phone told on me

I was sitting on the edge of the bed with my stockings half on, getting ready for church, when the phone put up that little note about your screen time for the week. An hour and fifty minutes a day, and most of it before eight in the morning. My minutes with Jesus were about ten, and not good ten.

That week I went on YouTube and read the comments under the videos about quiet time and the phone, because that's where the real women are. And there they were, writing out my exact morning.

Under the videos I found:

• Last week my daughter bought me A study Bible, English Standard Version. My day starts at 0345, make coffee and sit in the recliner. Before I would spend almost 3 hrs scrolling. Now I'm reading my new bible and a significant amount of less time scrolling. I can feel a real change in me for the better.
• I think phone was my distraction in the mornings, I should start reading a chapter before i touch the phone 📱🥲
• This is literally me today. Upset for no reason. Then I realize I’m spending more time on my phone than with the Lord 💀😭
• Thank you for letting see how you do your quiet time. Me being type A I so often don’t do it at all because I can’t do it perfectly! Silly I know

The one about the recliner is a woman whose daughter had just bought her a study Bible. The one that says "before i touch the phone" I must have read ten times. I didn't know yet what I was looking at, only that it had to do with the phone, and with the phone always getting there first.

What Marion said at the church kitchen sink

Marion is 75. She's kept her quiet time at 5 AM since 1981, when her four were all under ten. The next Tuesday we were washing the coffee cups after Bible study, and I asked her straight out how she keeps it. She shrugged, with her hands still in the dishwater.

"Well, I don't pick up my phone till I've said good morning to Jesus. That's about all."

Then she went right back to talking about the potluck. I thought about it the whole drive home.

The phone gets my hand before God does

Somewhere around the Food Lion I worked it out. The phone was getting my hand before God did, and whatever gets my hand gets my mind. I love Jesus, and I'd been picking up the phone first every day for years, before I was even awake enough to choose, because it was the alarm and it was right there by the bed. By the time I got to Him, my mind had already been four places and it didn't want to sit still.

It's like buttoning a cardigan in the dark. If the first button goes in the wrong hole, every button after it is wrong too, and you don't find out till you get to the bottom and there's one left over. My mornings were buttoned wrong from the top, and for thirty years I'd been fiddling with the bottom buttons. The earlier alarm, the journal and the plan were all bottom buttons.

So the trouble was the first button, and nobody had ever told me to look there. I'd been blaming myself, and my faith, and my age.

What a year of wrong first buttons cost me

And it didn't stay at the kitchen table. Somebody under one of those videos wrote that they would "talk to God, journal, read the Bible, and be at peace, and then scroll. And the peace turned to confusion." That was my whole day. Whatever peace I had was gone by nine, I'd be short with Dan, and I'd feel anxious in the car and not know why.

I'd been handing the first half hour of every one of them to Facebook.

My grandkids stay over on Fridays, and they watch which one Grandma picks up first. And I am 62. I don't know how many mornings I've got left, and I'd been handing the first half hour of every one of them to Facebook.

The first button

I've known that verse since Vacation Bible School and never once thought about it with my hands. Somebody in the comments put it their own way, "Seek his kingdom first and God will handle the rest." Another one wrote, "You deserve my first this morning." That's what I wanted to be able to say to Him at 6:15 and mean it.

Why nothing I owned could do it

Everything in my house did one or the other. The verse card is on the fridge, where my hand never goes first. The Bible app says something new every day, but it lives inside the phone, and the phone was the whole trouble.

Marion had one that did both. She showed me the next Tuesday, before study even started.

What Marion wears on her sweater

I got there early and told her what I'd worked out on the drive, buttons and all. Marion didn't say much. She pulled out a chair for me, got her phone from her pocketbook, held it to the tag on the front of her sweater and turned the screen around so I could see. It's a small flat piece of wood with a cross carved on the face of it, hanging from a plain black cord.

Her screen had that day's verse on it, all written out, and then her phone read it aloud to the two of us at the folding table. Psalm 5:3, in the King James, "My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O LORD." I had to sit there a minute before I could say anything, because that was the prayer I'd been failing at for thirty years, and the Lord had it waiting on a piece of wood.

The tag up close, and a phone reading it.

Marion hangs hers on the lamp by her bed at night, so it's the first thing her hand goes to in the morning, and she puts it on before her feet touch the floor. Her phone charges out in the kitchen. She touches it to the tag once, hears the verse, and turns it face-down till she's done with her Bible. It's carved by hand, so no two have the same grain. There's no app to download, and whoever wears one reads the same verse I do that morning, so after breakfast Marion and I compare what we got.

It's called The Promise Cross.

SEE THE TAG MARION WEARS →

What I asked her before I got one

"Wouldn't that be an idol, though?" Marion said, "I pray to Jesus, not to the tag." Somebody under a video about wearing crosses said it better than I could, "we aren't worshiping the cross or anything it's simply a reminder and expression of faith. God knows what's in our hearts."

"I'm not a necklace person." Marion wears hers right over her sweater like a name tag. Mine stays under my cardigan most days, and Dan's the only one who ever sees it.

"So it does my quiet time for me?" No. You still read the verse and you still pray it. All it does for me is get there first.

All it does for me is get there first.

So if your mornings with the Lord are fine the way they are, keep doing what you're doing, you don't need this. It's for the woman who sits down with her Bible every morning and still hands the first half hour to her phone, and is tired of calling that a faith problem.

Here's what I changed. I bought a $10 clock for the bedside and kept it this time, and the phone sleeps on the kitchen counter now. The tag hangs on my lamp. The first week I still wandered over and picked the phone up before the tag, a couple of mornings, and I slip back into the old way some mornings even now. But by the second week my hand was going to the lamp first, and this morning it was Psalm 143, "Cause me to hear thy lovingkindness in the morning." I touched the phone to the tag, heard the verse, turned the phone over, and I did not pick it back up till 7:15. I could tell you exactly what I'd read. There's been more peace at my kitchen table since than in years.

Three women who wrote in about theirs

Sent to the team

What tomorrow at 6:15 looks like

• Tomorrow6:15, still dark. The clock goes off and your hand finds the tag on the lamp before anything else. You say good morning to Jesus before your feet are on the floor. Downstairs you pour the coffee, hold the tag against your phone, and a verse starts reading to you. Then you turn the phone over, and you already know what you read.
• Week 2Your daughter calls at 7:30 on her way to work and asks if you got Psalm 46 this morning, because she did. Same verse, two kitchens, two states apart. You catch yourself saying it at the red light by the Food Lion, and the peace is still there at lunch.
• Day 60One of the grandkids climbs up next to you on a Friday and asks to do the tag. You let them, and you'd write that morning the way somebody in the comments did, "today morning I feel restored, assured, and rested."

Before

Now

What goes into one

Each one is carved by hand, so the grain on yours won't match anybody else's, and it's prayed over before it's sent. And they give you 60 days to send it back if it isn't right, and nobody does that with something they rushed. I'd rather pay for the hands.

Right now every order comes as two, Buy One, Gift One Free, so there's a second one for somebody.

This run is the one shipping now. Every cross is hand-carved and prayed over before it leaves, so a run only goes so far. When it sells out, Buy One, Gift One Free pauses until the next run on Monday, November 9 at 9:00 AM Eastern.

Please don't hold it up against the $3 verse card at the Christian bookstore. The prayer app lives in the same phone that was eating my quiet time, and the subscription box keeps coming every month whether I open it or not.

	First thing your hand finds	New verse each morning	Reads it aloud	Phone only for the verse
Verse card on the fridge	No	No	No	Yes
Bible app	No (inside the phone)	Yes	Some	No
One-year Bible plan	No	Yes	No	No
Prayer journal	No	No	No	Yes
The Promise Cross	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

A note from the editors. The offer below comes from the people who make The Promise Cross.

If you close this, tomorrow at 6:15 the phone gets your hand first again, and that's one morning. And think about who you'd give the second one to, maybe your daughter, or the woman two rows over at Bible study who nods along the way I used to.

What I wanted to know before I ordered

Good morning, Jesus. You get my first. Amen.Margaret L., North Carolina

GIVE HIM YOUR FIRST TOMORROW → BUY ONE, GIFT ONE FREE