A bad day

 By the time she got to Jesus, I think Martha was feeling pretty sorry for herself. Since she doesn’t want to be rude to the honoured guest, she starts of in a sweet, polite voice. “Lord…” but as soon as she speaks she cannot contain all the emotions. “DO YOU NOT CARE????” Here I think I hear a twinge of bitterness. “Do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her to come and help me.” After hearing that, I’m picking she’s feeling a bit lonely too. She has to serve alone! It’s always easier and better to have someone there with you as you work. The company makes the work so much easier. But here she is, feeling overwhelmed with this huge workload. Slowly she starts feeling resentful towards her sister, which turns into self-pity, which turns into loneliness. Now being lonely often causes a lot of frustration, and here we see that Martha is pretty frustrated when she talks to Jesus. She can’t get her work done without Mary, and Mary is just sitting there listening. But to make matters worse, take a look at Jesus’ reply in verse 41. His reply also shows us two more of her emotions. ANXIOUS and TROUBLED. In verse 41, Jesus pointed out to Martha Mary’s focus. Her focus is listening to Jesus. But what is Martha’s focus?? Her focus is on Pleasing Jesus. 

I imagine the feeling of disappointment when she hears Jesus’s gentle rebuke. She was doing her best, but as Jesus pointed out, she had the wrong focus.  He wasn’t telling her that she was wrong, but more showing her where her focus should be. He loves her soo very much, and only wants what’s best for her, and that means wanting her to have the right focus. 

 I imagine Martha hanging her head with hot tears running down onto the floor as she realises her mistake. 

Emotions

 So a quick recap: 

First we heard the story of how Martha and Jesus met. Then we saw her good qualities that made her stand out. Lastly we saw her bad qualities that got her in trouble. 

Now we’ll look into her emotions. Now you’re prolly thinking: what?? Martha has emotions??                     Well, yes, she does have emotions. 

I can just imagine some of the feelings/emotions that must’ve been running through Martha. I can just imagine her EXCITEMENT when she heard that Jesus was coming to town. But I also think it would’ve quickly turned to a NERVOUS twinge when it was decided that he would come to her house. Here is someone who loves serving others, and Jesus, the king of kings, accepts her invite to share a meal at her house. If she’s anything like me, then I think she would’ve definitely been feeling nervous. But I also think she spend would’ve started to feel overwhelmed once he arrived and she found out she was alone to serve!!! I have that feeling many a times, but it’s usually not started by excitement.  I always feel nervous when my boss comes into my department, and I feel nervous and overwhelmed when the big boss comes to inspect my work!! And sometimes I don’t keep my cool! And because of my reaction sometimes, I can kinda imagine what Martha’s reaction would be! “I mean, where is Mary anyways?? Doesn’t she know that chicken can’t get cooked by itself? And a table won’t get set without some hands!!! Oh yeah! That’s right, she wants me to do it all!!! Ok then!! Is that the way to treat the hard-working lady of the family?” Slowly her heart fills with RESENTMENT. So with a bang of a pot onto the stove, and a kicks at the chair to move it out of the way, Martha stomps off to find Mary! 

You’ll have to wait till next week to find out the rest of Martha’s emotions, and how Jesus deals with her!! (If I can wait that long!;)) 

Lord, don’t you care?

 Having a servants heart led her to be so caught up with serving that she took her eyes off Jesus and onto her serving. She wanted everything to be just right. Serving, however, is not her big sin. It was that her focus was on the wrong thing. She was so busy trying to impress Jesus that she had no time to listen to him.

So let’s dig a bit deeper into verse 40, and see if we can uncover some of her mistakes. 

So we see she was distracted with much serving. So she was BUSY and DISTRACTED!! She was using her amazing talent, but unfortunately, serving became a distraction to her. As soon as she allowed serving to distract her and make her become busy, she became BOSSY! She started telling Jesus what to do. This is also when her boldness became a problem. Her respectful voice quickly turned into a bossy tone. But Jesus gently rebuked her by pointing out some beautiful truths. 

HWSGRB

 Now as we read this story, try not focus on her bad points. You see we seem to put a lot of emphasis on her bad points and forget about her good points. So let’s try have a balance here. 

In Luke 10:38, we see Martha’s two amazing points. Notice that the story doesn’t start off with her bad points, but two of her amazing qualities. Now we don’t know if this was the first time Martha and Jesus had met, but imagine it was. Imagine Martha’s excitement of having a miracle maker coming to town. Her small little village for that matter!!!! The excitement would still be there even if they had met before. Martha’s immediate response was to be HOSPITABLE  and WELCOMING by asking him to come to her house. Martha probably had it all planned out what she was going to serve, and how she was going to serve it. 

But that brings me to another good quality of Martha’s!!! She had a SERVANT’S HEART! In verse 40 it mentions twice about her servants heart. Let me show you. 

“...distracted with much serving.” 

“...my sister has left me to serve alone.” 

She obviously loved serving. And if she loved serving, how appropriate that she was serving when Jesus came?? Or was it?? 

Verse 40 also tells us that Martha was RESPECTFUL. “Lord, do you not care...” She recognised her position under Jesus, and pointed out his true title. 

She was also BOLD by telling Jesus what to do. Now remember, we’re are focusing on her good points, not leaning on the bad.  So look at being bold from a good angle. Being bossy bold is not always the way to go, but being bold by telling others what you believe, and standing up for what you believe is a good kind of bold. 

Now while these are all good qualities to have, some of them led her into trouble. That is where Martha, unfortunately, went wrong.