A Matter of Life

"And [Martha] had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to his teaching. And she went up to him and said, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.’” Luke 10:40

According to Martha, Mary picked the wrong time to sit and listen to Jesus’ teaching.

“C’mon Mary”—you can almost hear her say—“after dinner, when the crockery is put away and the floors swept, then you can sit and listen to Jesus to your heart’s content. But right now there’s work to do!”

Sounds reasonable to us. But Jesus disagreed. He thought Mary’s timing was perfect.

Let’s take our cues from Mary. We shouldn’t wait until life "settles down." We must choose to sit and listen to the Lord’s teaching today. And we must strive to do so every day after.

We can’t afford not to. “Man does not live by bread alone,” God declares in Deuteronomy 8:3, “but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.”Just as we can’t survive without physical food, neither can we thrive without spiritual food. We cannot live without God’s Word. As our bodies require daily physical nourishment, so our souls need daily spiritual nourishment.

Our morning bowl of cereal won’t sustain us for three weeks. Neither can our souls subsist on one dose of God’s Word. As D.L Moody explains:

“A man can no more take in a supply of grace for the future than he can eat enough for the next six months, or take sufficient air into his lungs at one time to sustain life for a week. We must draw upon God’s boundless store of grace from day to day as we need it.”

We can’t truly live unless we sit and listen. So let’s daily “take in a supply of grace” through God’s Word and prayer.

(from the archives by Carolyn)