A Mary or a Martha

I think of the story of Mary and Martha in the Gospel of Luke. Jesus is drawing close to their town, and Martha invites Jesus into her home. There she begins to serve the Lord as her sister Mary sets at the feet of Jesus and in awe attentively listens to the words of the Savior. Martha is highly worried about the details of her service and wants to be as hospitable at possible, but loses sight of the fact that Jesus is there before her. 

I can only imagine the anticipation of Martha as Jesus is approaching the city, and she is preparing herself to invite him in to her home. I know on each occasion where we were to have a visitor into our home my mother would become frantic in preparation for several weeks in advance. She would become so involved in preparation that it would  dominate her thought and sometimes she would lose sleep over it. I can see Martha being the same way. She wanted to please the Lord so much that she became enamored in the preparation and service of Him, and forgot to take the time to appreciate the one whom she was serving.  There was the Son of God before her and she was so worried about service that she took no time to spend with Him. We can tend to do this ourselves when it comes to worship. It begins when we wake the morning of church. We press and have clean clothes, clean dresses and suits, shined shoes, and we neatly tuck our Bible under our arm to complete the classic church fashion. We show up at an appropriate time so that when it is time to begin we can start with class. We are sure to get our lesson finished so when the teacher calls on us we will have the answer. We move into the main area of worship after classes, and this is where the real focus begins. We get ourselves wrapped up in the actions and often forget their meaning. We want to make sure we sing the right notes, get the smallest piece of cracker, quitely sip our juice, give our offering, bow our head in prayer, and attentively listen to the preacher. However, what are these actions without meaning and true devotion.

The primary contrast between Mary and Martha is that Mary was so focused on the words of Jesus that she had no time to worry about the things that "needed" to be done. This is not to say that our worship is filled with things that are not needed. The elements that were earlier described are needed in our service, but we must make sure that our thoughts and actions revolve around God and Jesus. For Mary, her attentiveness was the only request that Jesus had. The same goes for Martha. We can become wrapped up in worrying about the material details of our service to God that we hinder ourselves from truly serving Him. Let us listen for His voice, be attentive, and cast off the worries that trouble us so much for a service to Him that is full of Spirit and Truth.

In Him,

Macon