Contemplative Bible Reading

Luke 10:38-42 (New International Version)

³⁸As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. ³⁹She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. ⁴⁰But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

⁴¹“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, ⁴²but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Let’s all criticize Martha. Here she has the opportunity to converse with the Son of God in her home, and how does she start the conversation?

Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!

Gosh.

Now let’s all criticize ourselves. Have you ever heard someone say, “If I don’t do it, it won’t get done?” Or how about, “That John, if it wasn’t for him our building would have fallen to the ground by now?”

Loving and serving one another involves some logistics. Someone has to be somewhere at sometime with some materials to get something accomplished. Those are consequences of living in a physical world. Those consequences make it easy to lose sight of the first words of this paragraph:

loving and serving one another.

Such is what ensnared Martha on this one day recorded forever in the Gospel of Luke. Note that Martha was not just playing host to Jesus but to “Jesus and his disciples.” How many people walked into Martha’s home that day? 10? 20? 30? 40? We don’t know. Martha was being a wonderful, warm, and loving servant. We could all learn from her love.

And we can all learn that even the most loving of us can trip on distractions.

God, what you have asked us to do isn’t easy. We are to love, serve, and not be distracted with all that comes with those tasks. We often fail. Thank you that you forgive us our failings. Help us all to forgive one another as well.