The One Thing Needed
The one thing needed
I wonder if you set yourself goals for this year?
Imagine this, Jesus walks into your room and tells you there is just one thing needed for 2026.
Just one thing needed and it is within your grasp. It isn’t too hard. God isn’t asking you to climb Kilimanjaro or tackle world poverty. In Luke 10, Jesus says that there is the one thing needed - to sit at his feet.
Maybe you hear that and think that’s harder than climbing a mountain! One friend told me his theme for 2026 – “undistractability”! That’s challenging because as psychologist, Anna Lembke explains, many of us are distraction junkies. Our screens bombard us daily with dopamine hits which validate us and divert us from life’s pains but the result is not relief but escalating anxiety.
Here is the answer - not another self-help podcast but sitting at the feet of Jesus. Resist distraction long enough to sit with Jesus and our drivenness is met by love that settles our souls.
We need an expert teacher to help us when it comes to distraction which is why the story of Martha and Mary is so encouraging. Jesus, our Saviour, is offering to teach us.
I love this story, not least because it’s radical in relation to women! The first shocker is that Mary, a woman, was invited to sit and learn at all. The second is that Martha passed up on the opportunity.
How amazing it is that God himself offers to be our teacher?! A friend’s daughter is auditioning at top ballet schools; she wants the best teachers. No audition is needed for us yet we are invited to sit and learn at the feet of Jesus. We are offered the best life teacher - a priceless free scholarship – but like Martha, so often we pass up on it. Yet lovingly, the Lord repeats Martha’s name, “Martha, Martha .. you are worried and upset about many things, but you have missed the one thing that is really needed.” (Luke 10:41-42)
What might it look like for us not to miss the One Thing?
There is something important here about the posture we adopt. Mary sat – setting Jesus higher than her. We don’t have to literally sit on the floor, but we can daily set Jesus higher, humbly looking up to him – to see his gaze of love, to learn Christ as we hear his words of freedom. I unlearn lies when I learn his truth. My heavy yoke shatters, replaced by the light yoke of his gentle teaching. Looking up, I trust not fret. Looking up stops me looking down on others. I begin to exchange my agenda for his. I am anchored in his affection instead of driven by distraction.
The One Thing Needed.
David chose it- “One thing I ask - to dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple”. Ps 27:4
Paul chose it, counting all as loss “for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord”:
Mary chose it.
Father God, help us to choose the One Thing Needed.
Photo by Dorrell Tibbs on Unsplash.
