Your children are your Psalms

Sometime last spring, we sat out on the deck for lunch with our friend Father Columba. He’s a Franciscan friar of the Renewal. We shared chicken Caesar salad and frozen pizzas. It was hot for an April afternoon; the sun hurled her heat at us without apology and we squinted as we spoke.

Father Columba is joy incarnate. It’s hard not to smile when you’re with him - not because he’s cracking jokes, but because while being one of the wisest people I know, he carries the expectancy and glee of a child. It’s what many have called a “second naïveté” - a faith, as Dostoevsky put it, that has been through the fire and has come out the other side dancing.

I asked him what a typical day looks like for a Franciscan friar, and he described it with a wry, irreverent smile: rising early to pray the Psalms, sharing breakfast with the brothers, setting aside time for personal devotion, then working in the community, serving the least.

Kara and I kept asking questions, impressed and inspired by such a devoted life. All the while, our kids ran around us, pulling us from the conversation every few minutes - to rescue our son after he flew into a wall on his bike, to affirm our daughter for something she’d done.

I confessed how difficult it had been lately to find time for prayer or reading, for quiet or reflection. Still looking at the ground, with that familiar smile stretching across his face, Father Columba said gently: “Your children are your Psalms.”

Kara and I looked at each other. Something in the moment settled deeply. What we do with our ordinary devotion is an act of worship. What we offer in the small, hidden morsels of time may matter even more than what we do with wide, uninterrupted days of spiritual possibility.

What if giving my full attention to a small child was just as holy as giving an hour to prayer?

There’s a story I love about Jesus in the temple. He sees a poor widow drop her coin into the offering, and it moves him. He calls his disciples over and says: “Look—that woman, in her poverty, gave more than all the others in their abundance.” The temple collection vessel wasn’t like the plastic tubs passed around at my childhood church, muffled by felt. It was shaped like a regal wind instrument, something between a trumpet and a trombone, its wide mouth designed to amplify the sound of every offering. Every clink echoed. The whole point was to make your generosity known.

Even the widow’s small coin would have made a sound - a single, vulnerable clink. It exposed not just the size of her offering, but her poverty too. It would have been humiliating. And given her status - widow, without expectation or obligation - no one would have faulted her for keeping it. She was the one offerings were for. And still she gave.

It’s strange what we consider significant. I used to think my life with God was measured in the depth of my thoughts, the time I carved out to pray, the books I finished, the hours I spent in uninterrupted stillness. But these days, most of what I offer feels incomplete, interrupted or insufficient. A half-read Psalm. A whispered prayer while pouring out Shreddies into my daughter’s pink bowl (God save me if I give her the blue one). A moment of restraint when I want to react. They feel small. Too small. But maybe that’s the point.

The widow gave what no one expected and not because it was impressive, but because it was all she had. It wasn’t the amount that moved Jesus. It was the offering of herself in the midst of her lack.

I think about that a lot. Especially when I’m cleaning up cereal again, picking up toys or soothing a child at 3am. Maybe offering ourselves to God in the middle of our poverty - emotional, mental, spiritual - is more powerful than we ever imagine. Maybe the point isn’t to wait until we’re composed and uninterrupted, but to give right in the mess.

It wasn’t the amount that moved Jesus. It was the offering of herself in the midst of her lack

That day on the deck, I realised I was still living with an internal hierarchy of what counts. Books over dishes. Silence over screaming toddlers. Solitude over presence. But Fr Columba reminded me that faith isn’t a competition of productivity, it’s a return to relationship.

What if giving my full attention to a small child was just as holy as giving an hour to prayer? What if I believed that the little I have, a copper coin’s worth of time or energy or peace, might still please the heart of God?

These days, I rarely feel impressive. I don’t wake early enough. I leave books half-read. I forget to reply to texts. I get irritable when I should be present. My prayers are short and scattered. But I’m beginning to believe God isn’t asking for grandeur but honesty. He yearns for me to speak to him in my actual voice and offer him my actual life.

If my children are my Psalms, maybe I’m already praying. If my interruptions are offerings, maybe I’m already giving. If my limp slows me down, maybe it’s just to walk closer to the God who never rushes, and who measures not what we give but how we give it.