Sunday 17 July 2022

July 17: Luke 10:38-42

Key Verse: Luke 10:40
But 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!’

Devotion:
This is one of those passages where we see the difference between people and how God reacts to those differences. Martha was a woman who wanted to make sure everything was right physically for Jesus in that she was making sure all the preparations were done to please Jesus as a guest of the house. This is often what we get caught up in doing in our own lives – we focus on the things we can change or do and we try to make sure they are done to the best of our abilities.

We even go as far as saying this is what God wants us to do and we justify what we do by saying this. But are we actually getting it right? That is the difficult question to answer and one who we have to take everything into consideration before we even attempt to answer that!

As I have said a few times over the last few weeks, Christ wants us to focus on Him and not too much on the world. He wants us to be able to live our lives by including Him in everything and trying to listen to what is actually needed and not the physical responses we are so used to following or fulfilling; we do this by listening more to the Holy Spirit and less to the world. We cannot say this is what was happening here because we don’t have insight into Mary and Martha’s personal lives and relationships with Jesus.

Jesus has warned us about judging others and this also highlights how we do this all the time. Martha was a bit upset by the lack of preparations Mary seemed to be doing, but totally missed Mary’s intentions – Jesus on the other hand did not miss Mary’s intentions. Mary was trying to focus on getting the most out of Jesus while He was with them. Martha was trying to put the most into the time Jesus was with them...

Points to Ponder:
Do you focus on what you do for God or what you get from God?

Will you try to balance your life with God?