The Grocery List I Write in the Same Order Every Sunday Night
The Grocery List I Write in the Same Order Every Sunday Night
RedeemedExistence daily devotional, October 4, 2026
I wrote it again last night at the kitchen table, the same list in the same order I have written it for years now, milk and eggs first because they sit at the back of the store, then produce, then the aisle with my wife's coffee creamer, then out. I did not have to think about it. My hand just moved. Somewhere around the bread I caught myself sighing, not because anything was wrong, but because nothing was. Same list, same store, same Sunday, same quiet house. I sat there for a second with the pen in my hand and felt something I was almost ashamed to name, a restlessness with a life that, by every honest measure, is good.
I have been sober six years, and for a long time I assumed that once the chaos ended, the restlessness would end with it. It has not worked that way. Back when I was drinking, every day held its own emergency, so there was never any room left over to feel bored or small. Sobriety gave me my family back, my evenings back, a Sunday I actually remember writing a grocery list on instead of sleeping through. It also gave me enough quiet to notice a different ache underneath the gratitude, a voice that keeps asking whether this ordinary life is really all there is, whether I am wasting whatever years I have left doing the same errands in the same order.
I used to think that ache was wisdom, proof that I was meant for something bigger than milk and eggs. I am starting to suspect it is closer to the oldest temptation there is, the suggestion that God's actual provision for me today is somehow beneath me. Solomon, who had every excess a man could chase and came back from all of it exhausted, landed on something I did not expect from a king. "Nothing is better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and that his soul should enjoy good in his labor" (Ecclesiastes 2:24, NKJV). Nothing better. Not a grander assignment waiting somewhere else, but the ordinary meal and the ordinary work, enjoyed, received as a gift instead of endured as a holding pattern.
Paul told a young church something that would have sounded unambitious to the man I used to be. "That you also aspire to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you" (1 Thessalonians 4:11, NKJV). Aspire is the word that stops me every time. He is not scolding people into smallness. He is naming a quiet life as something worth reaching for, which is almost the opposite of how my own restlessness has always treated it, as a consolation prize for people who never made it to the real story.
Timothy got a line I have quoted to other men more easily than I have ever believed about my own kitchen table. "Now godliness with contentment is great gain" (1 Timothy 6:6, NKJV). Great gain, not merely an acceptable outcome. I have spent years treating contentment as the thing you settle for once the exciting plan falls through, and Paul calls it gain, something actually won, not merely tolerated.
Here is where my own reasoning has never once gotten me free of it. I can remind myself how much worse my Sundays used to look, how many men would trade everything for a boring, sober evening with their family, and every word of that lecture is true and still leaves the sigh sitting right where it was. Reasoning can shame the restlessness into hiding for an hour. It has never once replaced it with actual joy. Isaiah names the only place that joy has ever reliably come from. "In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength" (Isaiah 30:15, NKJV). Not in a bigger errand. In returning, in rest, in a confidence that was never going to come from making the list more interesting.
This is what abiding in the Spirit gives that my own striving for significance never could. Jesus told His disciples the night before the cross exactly where fullness actually comes from. "As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full" (John 15:9-11, NKJV). Full joy was never promised as a reward for an extraordinary life. It is promised to whoever stays attached to Him, on an ordinary Sunday as surely as on any mountaintop. David found the same thing from the inside of his own quieter seasons. "You will show me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore" (Psalm 16:11, NKJV). In Your presence, not in the next assignment.
I finished the list last night, folded it, and set it by my keys for the morning, and for the first time in a while the sameness of it did not feel like a cage. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly which ordinary Sunday you are tempted to call wasted. He has a plan for you that was never too small just because it looks quiet from the outside, and He has told you plainly that He is not finished with it. "Let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said, 'I will never leave you nor forsake you'" (Hebrews 13:5, NKJV).
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Scriptures used (NKJV): Ecclesiastes 2:24; 1 Thessalonians 4:11; 1 Timothy 6:6; Isaiah 30:15; John 15:9-11; Psalm 16:11; Hebrews 13:5.
RedeemedExistence daily devotional, October 4, 2026
I wrote it again last night at the kitchen table, the same list in the same order I have written it for years now, milk and eggs first because they sit at the back of the store, then produce, then the aisle with my wife's coffee creamer, then out. I did not have to think about it. My hand just moved. Somewhere around the bread I caught myself sighing, not because anything was wrong, but because nothing was. Same list, same store, same Sunday, same quiet house. I sat there for a second with the pen in my hand and felt something I was almost ashamed to name, a restlessness with a life that, by every honest measure, is good.
I have been sober six years, and for a long time I assumed that once the chaos ended, the restlessness would end with it. It has not worked that way. Back when I was drinking, every day held its own emergency, so there was never any room left over to feel bored or small. Sobriety gave me my family back, my evenings back, a Sunday I actually remember writing a grocery list on instead of sleeping through. It also gave me enough quiet to notice a different ache underneath the gratitude, a voice that keeps asking whether this ordinary life is really all there is, whether I am wasting whatever years I have left doing the same errands in the same order.
I used to think that ache was wisdom, proof that I was meant for something bigger than milk and eggs. I am starting to suspect it is closer to the oldest temptation there is, the suggestion that God's actual provision for me today is somehow beneath me. Solomon, who had every excess a man could chase and came back from all of it exhausted, landed on something I did not expect from a king. "Nothing is better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and that his soul should enjoy good in his labor" (Ecclesiastes 2:24, NKJV). Nothing better. Not a grander assignment waiting somewhere else, but the ordinary meal and the ordinary work, enjoyed, received as a gift instead of endured as a holding pattern.
Paul told a young church something that would have sounded unambitious to the man I used to be. "That you also aspire to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business, and to work with your own hands, as we commanded you" (1 Thessalonians 4:11, NKJV). Aspire is the word that stops me every time. He is not scolding people into smallness. He is naming a quiet life as something worth reaching for, which is almost the opposite of how my own restlessness has always treated it, as a consolation prize for people who never made it to the real story.
Timothy got a line I have quoted to other men more easily than I have ever believed about my own kitchen table. "Now godliness with contentment is great gain" (1 Timothy 6:6, NKJV). Great gain, not merely an acceptable outcome. I have spent years treating contentment as the thing you settle for once the exciting plan falls through, and Paul calls it gain, something actually won, not merely tolerated.
Here is where my own reasoning has never once gotten me free of it. I can remind myself how much worse my Sundays used to look, how many men would trade everything for a boring, sober evening with their family, and every word of that lecture is true and still leaves the sigh sitting right where it was. Reasoning can shame the restlessness into hiding for an hour. It has never once replaced it with actual joy. Isaiah names the only place that joy has ever reliably come from. "In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength" (Isaiah 30:15, NKJV). Not in a bigger errand. In returning, in rest, in a confidence that was never going to come from making the list more interesting.
This is what abiding in the Spirit gives that my own striving for significance never could. Jesus told His disciples the night before the cross exactly where fullness actually comes from. "As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full" (John 15:9-11, NKJV). Full joy was never promised as a reward for an extraordinary life. It is promised to whoever stays attached to Him, on an ordinary Sunday as surely as on any mountaintop. David found the same thing from the inside of his own quieter seasons. "You will show me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore" (Psalm 16:11, NKJV). In Your presence, not in the next assignment.
I finished the list last night, folded it, and set it by my keys for the morning, and for the first time in a while the sameness of it did not feel like a cage. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly which ordinary Sunday you are tempted to call wasted. He has a plan for you that was never too small just because it looks quiet from the outside, and He has told you plainly that He is not finished with it. "Let your conduct be without covetousness; be content with such things as you have. For He Himself has said, 'I will never leave you nor forsake you'" (Hebrews 13:5, NKJV).
---
Scriptures used (NKJV): Ecclesiastes 2:24; 1 Thessalonians 4:11; 1 Timothy 6:6; Isaiah 30:15; John 15:9-11; Psalm 16:11; Hebrews 13:5.
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