Pas­tor Julien Cyrus

“There is on­ly one thing worth be­ing con­cerned about. Mary has dis­cov­ered it, and it will not be tak­en away from her” (Luke 10:42).

Imag­ine hav­ing Je­sus vis­it your home! As he passed through a vil­lage called Bethany, Martha wel­comed Je­sus in­to her home. She im­me­di­ate­ly head­ed to the kitchen to be­gin prepar­ing him a meal. How­ev­er, her sis­ter, Mary, sat at Je­sus’ feet and lis­tened to his teach­ing.

Mary man­i­fest­ed the pos­ture and cu­rios­i­ty of an ar­dent stu­dent lis­ten­ing in awe to the in­struc­tions of her teacher. The Apos­tle Paul re­veals that he was brought up at the feet of Gamaliel (Acts 22:3).

Martha, con­sumed by the weight of her work­load, be­came up­set over the fact that Mary was not as­sist­ing her. She could not al­low this per­ceived in­jus­tice to con­tin­ue and com­plained to Je­sus about it. How­ev­er, Je­sus in­sist­ed that Mary had cho­sen to do the right thing and he re­spect­ed and sup­port­ed her (Luke 10:40-42).

The cares of this life are dan­ger­ous, for though they seem to be ex­pe­di­ent and com­mend­able, they must not com­pete with that which God has to of­fer. As the host, Martha on­ly saw what she need­ed to pro­vide for Je­sus and failed to recog­nise that Je­sus was pro­vid­ing the one thing that was need­ed.

Martha was dis­tract­ed by the prepa­ra­tion of her im­pres­sive cui­sine and was cut off from Je­sus by the very thing that she was do­ing for Je­sus. Though he was present, she was not ben­e­fit­ing from his pres­ence.

Some of us are like Mary; we have learnt how to serve and sit at Je­sus’ feet. Some are like Martha; we dili­gent­ly, and with the best in­ten­tion, serve God, but fail to add that one thing – to fo­cus on Je­sus and sit at his feet. And there are those of us who don’t do ei­ther. We have no time to meet with Je­sus in the house, for we are lost in our own pur­suits.

God must be made aware that his sov­er­eign­ty, his pres­ence, and his word mat­ter to us. He must al­ways oc­cu­py the place of promi­nence as the chief in­gre­di­ent at every stage of our lives. Je­sus demon­strat­ed this by ris­ing very ear­ly and head­ing to a se­clud­ed place to spend time with his Fa­ther dai­ly (Mark 1:35). His phi­los­o­phy was: “The Son can do noth­ing of him­self, but what he sees the Fa­ther do” (John 5:19).

The psalmist de­clares, “One thing have I de­sired of the Lord, that will I seek af­ter; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to be­hold the beau­ty of the Lord, and to en­quire in his tem­ple” (Psalm 27:4).

Our love for the Cre­ator must su­per­sede our con­fi­dence in the tem­po­ral crea­tures we chase af­ter – ed­u­ca­tion­al at­tain­ment, wealth and ma­te­r­i­al sta­tus, or cul­tur­al tra­di­tions. The re­cent trag­ic events in Venezuela and Guyana should jolt us in­to ac­knowl­edg­ing that on­ly one thing mat­ters.

Je­sus awaits an in­vi­ta­tion in­to our lives so that we can sit and learn at his feet.