Life is messy. Dishes have to be done over and over.

Laundry keeps piling up. Furniture needs dusting and floors need vacuuming.

Babies need diapers and toddlers spill juice. Children bicker and tweens roll eyes. Spouses disagree.

Exhausted and worn thin from emotions spilled over and giving pieces of ourselves to everyone in our lives, we mommas find ourselves drained, empty.

We cry out for help or sleep or both … and we run on the inside from the demands and needs and pressures.

As hard as we try to do this momma/wife/homemaker thing, there’s always something we didn’t get done or need to do again.

Sometimes it all feels hopeless … and we begin to think, “Why bother?”

Life is messy … literally. But spiritually our lives are messy as well.

We can probably all relate to Paul’s cry of frustration, I want to do what is good, but I don’t.

I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway.  (Romans 7:19  NLT)

We struggle and strain in this battle of flesh against spirit.

Time and again we find ourselves in desperate need of help, aware of all the ways we flail and fall and fail.

We need something more than lists of rules and pages of expectations.

We can’t even manage to check off all the “good girl boxes” on the list. The expectations of others (and ourselves!) about what “good” looks like leave us aware of every misstep and mistake.

We need something more—something different, something better.  We need more than rules. We need a Redeemer, a Rescuer.

I love this from The Jesus Storybook Bible, “Before they left the Garden, God whispered a promise to Adam and Eve: “It will not always be so! I will come to rescue you!” … And he would.  One day, God himself would come.”

God saw our need for redemption, sees our need for His presence.

He promised Israel and He promises us as well, “But now thus says the Lord, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Fear not for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine.”  (Isaiah 43:1 ESV)

Our God is not a faraway God, a character in a fairy tale. He sees our needs and He meets them.

From clothing the lilies to healing the sick, He is not detached from our physical needs.

As much as He delights in meeting each need of our flesh, He is far more generous in meeting the needs of our spirit.

He draws near in the midst of our great need.  He draws near with the whispered truth of His love.

He draws near with the hope-filled promise of our redemption. When God draws near, He meets our greatest need: redemption.

How has God drawn near to you in your times of need?

Teri Lynne Underwood is a writer, speaker and blogger who longs to connect the hearts of women with the heart of God.  She writes daily at www.terilynneu.com where she encourages lives where the sacred and secular collide. Her husband, Scott Underwood, is the minister of music at Calvary Baptist Church in Russellville.