My devotional time happens in the car.
Not in a quiet room with a Bible and a journal and a hot cup of tea. In the car, on the way to the hospital, with worship music on and the shift ahead of me. That is where I gather myself. That is where I hand the day over before it begins.
It is not elaborate. It is not particularly holy-looking from the outside. But it is the thing that makes the difference between walking into a shift feeling alone and walking in feeling accompanied. And after everything nursing has asked of me, that distinction matters more than I can say.
If your devotional life doesn’t look like the ones in the books — if it happens in the car, or in a five-minute window before the chaos starts, or not at all some mornings — this is for you.
Why the Drive In Matters my experience
The drive to the hospital is a threshold. On one side is home — your family, your son, your ordinary life. On the other side is the ward — the patients, the demands, the emotional weight of the work. The drive is the only transition space you get.
Worship music in that space does something particular. It is not background noise. It is a reorientation — a way of reminding yourself, before the shift begins, what you actually believe about who you are and whose you are. You are not just a nurse clocking on. You are a person held by God, walking into work He has called you to, accompanied by a presence that will not leave when the shift gets hard.
That is what the music does. It says it out loud when you can’t form the words yourself.
Starting Your Shift With God — What It Can Look Like
It doesn’t have to be complicated. Here are simple ways to begin a shift with God, whatever your morning looks like:
- Worship music on the drive. Let it do the work your words can’t. Pick songs that remind you of who God is, not just how you feel. On the hard mornings, that distinction matters.
- One verse before you clock on. A single line, read or remembered, held in your mind as you walk in. Something to come back to mid-shift when everything else is loud.
- A one-sentence prayer in the car park. Before you get out of the car. “God, be with me today. Be with them.” That is enough. You don’t need more than that.
- A moment of silence before handover. Thirty seconds. Eyes closed if you can. Just: I am here. You are here. Let’s go.
- Letting the music linger. If a song hits something real on the drive in — let it finish. Sit in it for a moment. Don’t rush the threshold.
On the Mornings When You Don’t Feel Like It
There will be mornings when the worship music feels hollow. When you’re too tired to receive it, too numb to let it land. Put it on anyway.
Not because performance matters. But because the habit of turning toward God before a shift — even flatly, even without feeling — is the practice that holds you over time. The mornings when it doesn’t feel like anything are the mornings it is most necessary. You are building something, shift by shift, that will hold you when the hard days come.
“Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I entrust my life.” — Psalm 143:8
That is a morning prayer. A before-the-shift prayer. Said by someone who needed God before the day began. You are in good company.
✝️ For the nurse whose devotional happens in the car: God is not confined to quiet rooms and scheduled prayer times. He is in the commute, in the worship song that plays at exactly the right moment, in the thirty seconds of silence before you walk through the hospital doors. Your car is a holy enough space. Your drive is a long enough prayer. He meets you where you are — and that includes the hospital car park at 6:47am, before the shift begins.
The car counts. The music counts. The one-sentence prayer counts.
For more on faith in nursing — the quiet seasons, the hard questions, and the God who stays: → Faith in Nursing: When the Job Tests Everything You Believe
Shifting with Grace — for the nurse whose church is sometimes a car on the way to a shift.