The One Thing That Mattered

When Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in 2005, a retired schoolteacher named Margaret Robinson refused to evacuate her home in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. Neighbors pleaded. Her daughter called from Houston, begging. But Margaret had weathered storms before, and she trusted her brick walls.

The floodwaters came anyway. They rose past the porch, past the windowsills, past the photographs on the mantle. Margaret climbed to her attic, then broke through the roof with a kitchen chair. She sat on those shingles for eleven hours, watching everything she owned dissolve beneath her.

When a rescue boat finally reached her, the volunteer asked if there was anything she wanted to grab from the house. Margaret shook her head. "I spent forty years collecting things," she told a reporter days later. "Sitting on that roof, I found out the only thing I actually needed was Someone to talk to in the dark."

That is the prayer of Psalm 27. David had palaces, armies, a kingdom — yet he asked the Almighty for exactly one thing: to dwell in the presence of God and gaze upon His beauty. Not safety from enemies, though enemies surrounded him. Not victory, though battles loomed. Just nearness to the Lord, his light and his salvation.

When the floodwaters of life rise, possessions and plans wash away. But the one thing — the presence of the Living God — holds firm beneath us like bedrock.