Slow Down!
My husband is invited to a men’s retreat each year, in Nebraska. The men meet at a monastery out in a rural area for three days. Most of the focus is directed toward finding solitude in the presence of the Lord. At the last retreat Ed (my hubby) attended, the men were instructed to find a quiet place to meditate and pray, listening for the Lord, and asking themselves “have I heard the Lord in the past,when, and how often“? Ed said, “What we all found out was, yes we have and we do hear the Lord“. And, “it is in those times when we become available to Him to listen, that we hear“.
This is not to say that the Lord can’t speak to us while we are in motion. But, speaking for myself, I always have to slow down to understand. There are times that I have been awakened in the middle of the night, or early in the morning with thoughts that only the Holy Spirit could have put in my mind. If I don’t get up and write my thoughts down, I will forget what my mind and/or my heart is telling me. I will also say this: We don’t have to sit on the ground (as Mary sat at Jesus’ feet-some of us have trouble getting up off the floor), but if you have not spent some time there…you will never know what a sweet time of listening to the Lord it is. There was nothing wrong with Martha’s kind hospitality and serving, it was the fact that she was being distracted from what was happening. She had the presence of the Lord in her home, flesh and blood. We only have five verses of scripture to describe the encounter. I can only imagine what it would have been like for the Lord to sit and teach in your home.
Let’s go on to verses 41 and 42. Verse 41 says, “And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha thou art careful and troubled about many things.”
What do you think it meant when Jesus spoke Martha’s name two times?
I think it was because the message Jesus was about to give her, was very important.
The ‘Greek word for careful is ” ‘Merimnao. It means to be anxious about and to have thoughts that divert your attention. ‘Thorubazo is the ‘Greek word for troubled and it means a disturbance, tumult or uproar. Tumult is like the confusion and noise of a crowd or a violent commotion”. I would say these are very strong meanings for “careful” and “troubled”. ‘Greek translations from Vine’s Concise Dictionary of The Bible
Think of a time in your own life when you were “careful and troubled about many things“? Have you ever had thoughts that divert your attention? Have you ever been so confused, your life was in an uproar?
Most of us have heard the phrase…”running around like a chicken with your head cut off”. Martha must have been doing that!
Scripture to ponder: Verse 42
”But one thing is needful; and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”
Thought to ponder: “Christ did not appoint professors, but followers” Quote by Soren Kierkegaard
Tomorrow, we will conclude our first encounter with Mary, Martha and Jesus, and move on to the second encounter.
This entry was posted on Thursday, January 7th, 2010 at 7:48 pm and is filed under Bible Studies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
