Held Together: Finding Rest in the One Who Keeps the Rhythm

“And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17).

“Mama, did we water the flowers today?”

My four-year-old’s question caught me off guard as we drove past a field of wildflowers on our way out of town.

I thought for a moment. “Oops. I think we forgot,” I admitted. 

Every morning before breakfast, my daughter and I water the flowers on our front porch. A single task in a daily rhythm we’ve gotten so used to. But that day, we had forgotten.

Looking for Rhythm

In our day-to-day lives as Christian mothers, we often crave rhythm and routine. We want to believe that we can hold everything together and that things won’t slip through the cracks. This longing for routine, for predictability, for order, is a reflection of the Lord’s image in us. In all things, God is the Composer, creating order out of chaos. And we get to reflect his image by creating order in our homes. Our daily lives can sound the tiniest bit like the symphony the Composer is conducting all around us. 

But our attempts at keeping the rhythm often fall short. There are seasons where the baby won’t sleep, where our big plans get canceled, where the family gets sick. In these more rhythmless seasons, we wonder things like, How can I ever create an orderly life when I can’t even remember to water my plants? When I can’t even get breakfast on the table at the same time every day? When I can’t even remember that I was supposed to move the clothes from the washer to the dryer three hours ago? How are we supposed to “be still,” as the Bible says, in seasons where we can’t even find time to sit down?[1]

Reflecting on his own ministry, John the Baptist stated that “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). So too, as Christian mothers, we seek to forsake self and magnify Christ in the ministry within our homes. Our reliance on our ability to create perfect daily rhythms must decrease, and our ability to notice the perfect rhythms the Lord has established all around us must increase. Our desire for our own will to be done must decrease, and our trust in God’s will must increase.

Surrendered Expectations

The other day, I was rocking my three-month-old son to sleep. Between lullabies, I saw my exhausted eyes in the mirror, saw the laundry in the corner waiting to be folded, and realized I hadn’t even thought about what to make for dinner. All of this feels so rugged. And then I thought, The cross was rugged, too. The Christian life is not a ministry of pristine rooms and polished schedules. It's learning to lay our lives down, to embrace our God-given limits, and to persevere even in an unpredictable and broken world. As Christian mothers, we take our expectations—for our homes, our schedules, our lives—and lay them at the foot of the old rugged cross saying, “Your will be done, Lord.” Just as all things were created through him and for him, so our lives should be an offering to him. He must increase; we must decrease. 

What does this mean practically? It means when we forget to water our plants, we can rejoice that our God never fails to water the wildflowers. When bedtime goes poorly, we can remember that our God has ordered the moon to grace the sky every night just the same. When a hard season hits or big plans fall through, we can be still and know that the leaves will fall in the autumn and grow in the spring because our God knows and sustains all things.

“For by him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:16-17).

Our God is the One behind it all—the One who keeps the rhythm.

The Song of Creation

Once in a while—not often enough—I wake up early enough to watch the sunrise. And watch is all I can do: I can’t pause it; I can’t control it; I can’t command the sky to be pink when it’s orange or vice versa. God does that. We know, almost precisely, when the sun will rise and set each day, when the leaves will fall off the trees and when they’ll grow again, and how the tide will behave. And every time we stop and pay attention, we’re reminded that our God is a God of rhythm, a God of order, and a God whose ways are better than our ways and who holds all things together. Thanks to him, there is an underlying, ever-present, lowly and loud and glorious rhythm all around us, and nothing we do—or fail to do—can interrupt it. While we’re called to faithfully grow in Christlikeness, the story of our motherhood doesn’t ultimately depend on how well we order our own lives. And this is grace, for we are lousy rhythm keepers. How kind of God to do it for us.

[1] Psalm 46:10