Jesus never meant us to live in a world where we have to make a choice to be either a Martha or a Mary—where in order to seek holiness, we would have to change the temperament God gave us. Jesus was offering Martha, who was stuck in her either/or mindset, another option, the “both-and” option. He was extending to her an invitation to the one necessary thing, the one thing we need to live in intimacy with him, no matter how we are wired. He was extending to her in that moment, just as he extends to us now, an invitation to contentment, to live unhurried and unafraid, knowing that he is present, right here in the chaos of our everyday lives. And we can embrace that contentment whether we are natural sitters or natural servers.
He is an equal-access Savior. The truth is that any one of us could choose to sit at Jesus’s feet and still be anxious and worried, distracted, missing out on the grace of the Savior’s presence—just as we could also be in the kitchen contentedly laying supper out on a platter, while we tuned into Jesus’s presence right there in our midst and drank of all that he had to offer. What Jesus wants for you and me has very little to do with whether we sit or stand, serve the supper or contemplate at his feet. What he wants for us is to be so keenly aware of his divine presence with us that whatever we do takes on the nature of the extraordinary, and we live in a sense of wild gratitude. We can live knowing that we are completely surrounded by God, knowing that we are not working for his approval but for his pleasure. We can know that we are able to be utterly and completely confident and content in who we are and how we are wired because he is here, visiting us with his love and grace.
—from the book Who Does He Say You Are? Women Transformed by Christ in the Gospels
by Colleen Mitchell
//Franciscan Media//