A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original article appears below. Esther Mcllveen is a freelance writer living in Richmond. B.C.
I will be celebrating my fifty-second birthday in a few weeks. As I reflect back on my life I am deeply conscious about the tension between busyness and solitude – activity and contemplation.
As mothers of young children, or men and women in professions, we often seem on a collision course between trying to get the job done and feeding one’s own inner springs. Our society doesn’t place a high priority on the quiet life – noise, crowds, hurry seem the norm. Reflection, solitude, meditation and prayer are often foreign activities.
We see this tension graphically displayed in the lives of two sisters – Mary and Martha.
We fool ourselves when we think that large centres produce strenuous activity – not so. We find stress and tension in the Bethany (where there are no four-lane highways, nor fast food places) of Mary and Martha.
When we read about the two sisters (Luke 10:37-54, John 12: 1-8) we see Martha as the activist – practical, dependable, responsible. One instinctively feels that if there is something that needs to be done – call Martha! She is meticulous, probably with a concern for detail. She is also good at administration: she has a real need to be needed, a servant with an open-house attitude. A valuable person.
We might slot Mary as the spiritual one. Maybe she is a bit difficult to live with, perhaps not pulling her share of the load and even a bit wasteful.
If you contrasted the movements of the two sisters it would look something like this:
Martha served
– Mary sat
Martha ran
– Mary remained in the house
Martha complaining
– Mary anointing the feet of Jesus
Martha drawing attention to herself
– Mary’s attention toward Jesus
The trouble with anxious activists is that they try to pull the Marys into their whirlpool.
I was interested to notice how Jesus views these two sisters. It says that he loves them both. He simply states that Mary has made a choice – a choice to sit at his feet. He says that the choice is lasting and that he isn’t about to take it away. Jesus protects Mary’s values from those who find her wasteful (time-wise and money-wise), those closest to her who feel that she should be doing when she was sitting – that she should be giving the money to the poor instead of pouring out expensive perfume.
We learn a great deal about Jesus’ values from this story! What they call wasteful, he sees as being very beautiful (probably it was the smell of Mary’s perfume still clinging to his body that brought comfort to Jesus on the cross). Isn’t it amazing that he didn’t think it a waste of his time to pour into Mary (even though we never hear that Mary did anything with it). He just seemed to want to pour into a channel that was open and available.
The Lord has shown me that these two sisters both live inside me! Martha pulling me towards achievement and productivity and Mary wanting Jesus to reveal himself to me in solitude. Unfortunately Martha has often won the battle because she makes me look good to the neighbours.
I believe the story of the two sisters is a story of priorities – unless you and I choose to take time to sit at the feet of Jesus, we will not grow into his image. We will not come to know him – we will not have purposeful giving but we will try to give to others from our poverty – our dry wells.
When busyness comes, we will be able to draw from the springs that have been well fed – from wisdom rather than pooling ignorance – power, rather than recycling problems.