Daily Devotional • October 25
A Reading from Luke 10:38-42
38 Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomed him. 39 She had a sister named Mary, who sat at Jesus’s feet and listened to what he was saying. 40 But Martha was distracted by her many tasks, so she came to him and asked, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her, then, to help me.” 41 But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things, 42 but few things are needed—indeed only one. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”
Meditation
As a doer and a recovering workaholic, this passage often makes me feel shame. But when I slow down, I notice that Martha’s error was not that she was dutifully serving the Lord in practical ways. Instead, Martha erred by seeing her work as better than Mary’s and complaining to Jesus with judgment upon her sister. Perhaps she was hoping that Jesus would award her and tell her she is better. Christ’s correction is primarily for her pride, not for practical work done joyfully for the Lord.
Elsewhere in the gospels, Jesus criticizes those who pray theatrically in public for the purposes of being seen. Instead, Jesus encourages his followers to pray in secret (Matthew 6:5-6). Similarly, Jesus is not condemning public prayer. Instead, he’s challenging our motivations. Is our primary motivation to delight in the Lord, or are we pridefully performing so others will see?
When I labor for the Lord, I must admit, my kingdom work can sometimes become a distraction from loving the Lord and those the Lord calls me to love.
In response to Martha’s pride, you might read Jesus to say, “It would be better to neglect kingdom work while joyfully seeking intimacy with me than to pridefully do kingdom work. But thankfully, those aren’t the only two options. You can joyfully seek intimacy with me AND right-heartedly labor for the kingdom.”
If those words fit for you, what steps could you take today to seek both the Lord and his kingdom with a right heart?
Pieter Valk is a licensed professional counselor, the director of EQUIP, and cofounder of the Nashville Family of Brothers, an ecumenically Christian brotherhood for men called to vocational singleness.
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Daily Devotional Cycle of Prayer
Today we pray for:
The Diocese of Karachi – The Church of Pakistan (United)
Church of St. John the Divine, Houston