The Rest Of Your LifeSample

Sitting at His feet

Martha often gets a bad press. But not from me. 

Like her, I am often an activist. I can get frustrated when people just sit about and look holy. Martha is the sleeves-rolled-up girl, grasping her salad servers. I can see her clearly. The grill is on high, the dishwasher is beeping, the washing machine is whirring. The kettle is on. The emails are flying in. The talk is nearly written. WhatsApp messages are pouring onto her phone. 

I know what that kind of life is like. Maybe you do too?

But I also understand Mary. She’s been listening to a podcast on the “Ten most beautiful blessings of restfulness”. She has just downloaded the latest worship CD from iTunes. She is booked into a conference on the new spiritual discipline of peaceful contemplative prayer with pilates at a silent retreat center in a forest – with watercolor painting in the evenings. She hugs strangers on trains. She laughs and cries at adverts. She is joyful. She is little.

I know what that life is like too. I can be like Mary. Maybe you can too? I am a worshipper at heart. I can spend hours praying and singing and forget my other responsibilities. There is a bit of both of them in me. 

I think that there is a bit of both of them in you too. And the reason is because they represent two facets of our divinely-made human nature. We were made for restful worship. We were also made to work.

God is in our worship, the Mary part of us, but he’s also in our work – the Martha part. In fact, the Hebrew word avodah (which sounds like a Star Wars character, I know!) can be translated as worship and work. It means both. Worshipful work. 

Let me encourage you to knead those two words together today.

I think being at rest means that our work and our worship naturally intertwine. Like friends. More than this, like sisters. 

Our best work, and our most beautiful rest, has to come from a place of space and worship. 

Joanna Weaver wrote, “Jesus’ words to Martha are the words he wants to speak to your heart and mine: ‘You are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed.’ The ‘one thing’ is not found in doing more. It’s found by sitting at his feet.”