by Edwin Crozier<\/p>\n
Imagine you woke up in the middle of the night, and your smoke detector is blaring. A fire is consuming your house. You realize you have time to grab just one thing and run out onto the street. What do you get?<\/p>\n
What would you think of a person with an infant child who answered, “My stash of cash I keep hidden in the cookie jar”? We can hardly imagine that scenario even occurring. Yet, people make that kind of choice all the time.<\/p>\n
We see Martha make that choice in Luke 10:38-42. Martha had the best of intentions. In fact, at other times, her serving was the most important thing. We seemingly see such a moment of great serving from Martha in John 12:2. But in this moment, the serving was a distraction from the one necessary thing. Jesus was teaching. There would be time to prepare lunch after He was done.<\/p>\n
Mary wasn’t being lazy. She was prioritizing. She was choosing the one necessary thing. She was choosing Jesus. Choosing Jesus would not be taken away from her. Martha’s meal would be eaten, and everyone would get hungry again. The house she was cleaning would eventually crumble into ruins. The impression she was making was not as impressive as she might think. But listening to and heeding Jesus provided promise for this life and the next. It would never be taken away. Understand, this world is on fire. We really only have time to grab one thing and take it with us. That one thing had better be Jesus.<\/p>\n
And what an interesting contrast to what we discovered yesterday. After all, Martha was serving. She seemed to be taking the role of the least. She was a servant of all; shouldn’t she have been the greatest of all? Yet this event shows our pride, and the tempter can pervert and distort even good things. Most of the time, serving like Martha is exactly what we should be doing. But in that moment, Martha wasn’t serving just to serve; she was serving to be the greatest. She was so caught up in her own pride that she even rebuked Jesus for not recognizing how much greater than Mary she was. Notice that Jesus did not rebuke her while she was serving instead of listening. He didn’t rebuke her until she made a martyr out of herself for doing all the serving. When she allowed her service to be a source of pride, then Jesus corrected her, not before.<\/p>\n
Every day we have choices. In all of them, we need to choose Jesus. No, that doesn’t mean skipping work to read your Bible all day. But when you go to work, do it because you are choosing Jesus. Jesus is glorified when we work with excellence and when we provide for our families. Work for Jesus’ glory, not merely for your next promotion. When you read your Bible, do it because you are choosing Jesus, not because you are trying to impress others with your spiritual discipline.<\/p>\n
Choose Jesus. He is the one necessary thing. When the world burns, He will not be taken away from us.<\/p>\n
Praise the Lord!<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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