Martha and Mary

Everywhere I turn these days, someone is complaining about being too busy to get anything accomplished.  People seem to want it "all" - clean house, manicured lawn, ironed clothes, home cooked meals, upwardly mobile job, waxed car with clean interior, problem-free friends with time for lunch dates and movie dates and shopping trips and workouts and leisurely coffee breaks and walks, attentive spouse with energy for romance, two hopefully cleaned and fully dressed, well-rounded children who are into everything and doing everything well.  Whew!  Time for one of those coffee breaks.

Wait a minute.  Did I leave something out of that list?  Home, car, spouse, friends, job, dog.  I did leave something out - the dog!  Now I feel better, but
my list still looks incomplete. I have that and that and that and that and - wait!
I forgot God.  How could I forget God?  Forgetting Him is really not that hard.  People do it every day.

When I look at that list, I don't see where I could work God in.  There just doesn't seem to be enough time in the day. 

Maybe that is why our world is spiraling out of control.  Jesus did say to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto to you.

These days, when I think of Martha and Mary, I think of "do-ers" and "be-ers."
So much of spiritual life is spent running around doing instead of being.  When we do this, our doing becomes a fleshy, religious service that isn't much different from what the world deems service.

I think God wanted much, much more for us.  He created us for relationship, not religious acts of service.  Service without relationship is getting the proverbial cart before the horse. 

 

Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices? (1 Sam 15: 22) 

 

The multitude of your sacrifices - what are they to me? I have more than enough. (Isaiah 1:11) 

 

My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise. (Psalm 51: 17)

 

 

Our service should simply be the outflow of our relationship with Him.  We love because He loves.   How do we know He is loving and good if we don't have relationship with Him?  How can we offer others the hope that is found in Jesus if we don't really know Him who is hope?

 

There will never be enough time to have a relationship with God if we don't make it our number one priority.  I don't know how to tell you to do that because we all are different.  What works for one might not work for another.

I do know that those times with Him are precious and important and worth every minute we are willing to spend.

 

 

To All Us Marthas

 

Lord, I have a Martha's heart

yet desire to be like Mary.

 

Don't want to miss the sweet reality of Your presence

being frantically busy trying to please you.

Don't want to forfeit Your tenderness

busily eager to minister to You and Yours.

 

You desire not my efforts to please or my ministry

but all of me, my heart and soul, my love.

If I could but learn to give these first,

then everything done afterwards would be light and free,

unencumbered, never confining or burdensome.

 

Would You deconstruct my Martha's heart and make it more like Mary's?

Could it learn to be at peace?

Could it know the sweet reality of Your tender presence,

the freedom of Your precious love?

 

As a song is easily transposed from one key to another,

do so in me.

Transpose my heart.

Help me shift gears,

or I will not survive.

 

 

Mary

 

Mary,

oh what an example of extravagant love -

exquisite jar, expensive perfume,

broken, emptied over the head of Love.

"And the house was filled with fragrance."

 

Could have been sold,

given to the poor,

but somehow she knew what His closest did not.

Kneeling, she seized the opportunity.

"And the house was filled with fragrance."

 

Private moment, public place.

Tears mingled with oil.

Hair in humble hands washing holy feet.

World fades away as private drama unfolds.

"And the house was filled with fragrance."

 

Two kinds of lovers in this old world -

those who hold back nothing, give their all,

and those too afraid, too self-conscious to give at all.

May we choose to be like Mary.

"And the house was filled with the fragrance."