Monday, July 29, 2024
Memorial of Saints Martha, Mary, and Lazarus
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
The one thing
A woman named Martha welcomed Jesus. Her sister Mary sat beside the Lord at his feet, listening to him speak, while Martha was burdened with much serving. “Tell Mary to help me,” she said to Jesus.
Sometimes it’s just better if I hear the same thing a second time. Here we are today thinking about Mary and Martha and their sweet brother Lazarus, and the poem I liked yesterday, I like even better today.
Busy
It’s nice to sit in silence
soaking in the beauty, resting in peace,
receiving the love that it may spill out.
But sometimes the sink is full of dishes,
the clothes hamper is overflowing
and there is nothing to eat for breakfast.
There too is God, in the busyness, if we but open ourselves,
rolling up sleeves, getting ‘er done.
Sometimes the path to the peaceful place is through.
So I suggest that you take God with you there and everywhere,
and stop along the way as life allows.
As for the lives of Mary and Martha, God illuminates each. When Brother Lawrence washed his dishes, he found the presence of God in the drying cloth. I imagine Thomas Merton at his hermitage near the chapel at the Abbey of Gethsemani, listening to birds and breezes, writing poetry and letters, finding his way among the thoughts God filled him with to what he called “the virgin point.”
When Clarence suggests taking God with you there and everywhere, he’s not really offering us that option, only that awareness. God always goes with me, and washing dishes with Martha or washing feet with Mary makes no difference to Him.
Don’t be anxious and worried about many things, Martha. There’s just the one thing.
We don’t need to join Indiana Jones and his search for the Ark or read thick books late at night to discover what that one thing is. The “one thing” is God, God in three persons, we say, but still just the One Thing.
Do not be unmindful of the Rock that begot you, do not forget the God who gave you birth.
(Jeremiah 13, Deuteronomy 32, John 8, John 11, Luke 10)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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