"Deep inside of you, there is a hunger, a calling, to know and love God. To truly know Jesus Christ and the fellowship of the Spirit. You're not after more head knowledge, it's heart to heart intimacy that you long for.
Yet a part of you hangs back. Exhausted, you wonder how to find the strength or time. Nurturing your spiritual life seems like one more duty, one more thing to add to a life that is spilling over with responsibilities.
It's almost as if you are standing on the bottom rung of a ladder that stretches up to heaven. Eager, but damned, you name the rungs with spiritual things you know you should do: study the Bible, pray, fellowship..." -Joanna Weaver(Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World)
As I read this last night after a wonderful, yet tiring, day, I wondered if Joanna had peeked into my spiritual life and thoughts and decided to write a book about it. The entire first chapter continued to affect me like waves that just kept coming. But these waves weren't drowning me. Instead they simply encompassed me as I struggled to grab a breath.
That ladder of reaching Christ is so daunting, so scary, and very guilt inducing. And yet it is a figment of our imagination. It is the picture that Satan plants in our mind to daunt and scare us. It is an idea that people have thought for ages and generations, but was never based in truth.
Joanna goes on to show this in the life of Martha and Mary. I love the way she paints Martha out, so as I both laugh at and sympathize with the woman.
"She opens up her home to a band of thirteen hungry men, possibly more.... She doesn't whip up an impromptu casserole of Kraft macaroni and cheese and Ballpark franks as I've been known to do on occasion. Not her! She is the original Martha Stewart, the New Testament's Proverbs 31 woman, and Israel's answer to Betty Crocker....
Like a military general, she barks commands to her kitchen staff. Soak the lentils! Pound the grain! Knead the dough!...
'Has anyone seen Mary?' she asks a servant scurrying by. If Mary changed the sheets, Martha might have time to fashion an ark from the cheese and carve the fruit into little animals marching two by two. Productions of this magnitude require the skill of a master planner. And Martha's an administration extraordinaire, a whirling dervish of efficiency, with a touch of Tasmanian she-devil thrown in to motivate the servants."
But even though it makes you laugh, it also has a ring of truth. Martha really resonates with me. I may not always be a master planner, and a whirling dervish of efficiency, but on the days that I am not, I find myself fervently wishing I were.
I want to be the kind of woman who carves animals from the fruit, is the current Betty Crocker, and never, ever, ever, uses Kraft macaroni and cheese. Did I say never? Ok, just checking. And there is nothing wrong with desiring that, it is merely Martha's personality.
I hope to blog soon about the difference in Mary and Martha's personalities, but as I am running low on time, just want to encourage you to look at Martha's story. Look at her story and recognize that her desires and personality made it more difficult to choose the "better thing." And others like her should learn from her story that there is a time for work, and a time for play. A time to scurry about, and a time to sit at the feet of the teacher.
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