A new week begins whether we’re ready or not.

Today was one of those mornings when I surveyed the disarray, examined the undone, inventoried the chaos and wanted to give up before I even began. 

I walked up the driveway after an early-morning run and noticed all the trash in my yard. Trash. In my yard.

Popsicle wrappers, plastic cups, and unidentifiable plastic shards.

I complain. My husband reassures me and says our home and yard simply look “lived in.” I told him that it looks looted.

It’s days like today that I have to put on blinders and focus on the most rudimentary of needs. I want to finish an array of tasks that will pretty things up or restore some semblance of order.

But what do I really need to do, God? That’s the question I prayed in the shower.

As I considered our basic needs, I was struck by the spiritual corallary to the physical must-haves. I wonder if God planned it that way.

So what do we need?

We need food. 

…Man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. {Deuteronomy 8:3}

We need covering.

I delight greatly in the LORD; 
   my soul rejoices in my God. 
For he has clothed me with garments of salvation 
   and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness, 
as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, 
   and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels. {Isaiah 61:10}

We need rest. 

This is what the Sovereign LORD, the Holy One of Israel, says: “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength… {Isaiah 30:15}

When we’re feeling frantic, overwhelmed, and less-than, it may be because we’re hungry, exposed, or tired in the physical sense. But it may go deeper than that. 

Perhaps we need to feast on truth, to open the Word and taste renewal.  

Maybe we need to recognize that His righteousness {and not our own} covers us. Nothing we do on any given day {or fail to do} can clothe us with anything else.

And might our search for true rest be found as we trust in Him and not in our own efforts to subdue the disorder that surrounds us?

The yard trash is still there, dinner needs fixing and the laundry continues to mock me from the corner, but deep within I’m learning what matters and what doesn’t. 

It’s ironic that sometimes I simply have to get back to the basics in order to realize that I actually have everything I need.

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