The Christian discipline of beginning the day with prayer and Scripture reading. The OT pattern is established in the psalmist: My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O LORD; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up (Psalm 5:3); O LORD, in the morning shalt thou hear my voice (Psalm 5:3 LXX). The Lord Jesus Himself rose early to pray: And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed (Mark 1:35). The continuing burnt-offering at the temple was offered every morning and every evening (Numbers 28:3-4); the believer's morning prayer participates in this pattern by ordering the day under the LORD's authority before secular obligations begin. The Reformed-Puritan practice was a fixed time before breakfast for family worship and private devotion: the master of the house gathered his household, read a Scripture passage, expounded briefly, led prayer, and dismissed the family to the day's labors with deliberate spiritual orientation. The patriarchal-Reformed reader recovers morning prayer as a substantive household and personal practice: deliberate early rising; a fixed time and place; substantive Scripture reading (not merely a verse-of-the-day); prayer covering thanksgiving for the night's preservation, confession of sin, intercession for the day's labors and the family's needs, supplication for the Spirit's grace; deliberate orientation of the day's vocational labors under the Lord's authority before the practical demands of the day take over.