Occupied

But Martha was distracted with much serving. And she went up to him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.”  But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary.  Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”  -- Luke 10:40-42

Right, Lord, and, if everybody sits there like Mary, you all are going to get mighty hungry.  Somebody has got to fix the frijoles.  Western civilization was not built by people sitting on their butts listening to pretty stories. 

Or was it?

I am extremely lazy.  If it’s work, I try to avoid it, but I’ll work and wear myself out playing.  I like listening to and telling stories better than I like cooking and cleaning.  Strangely, most people like my stories better than my cooking, now that I think about it.  I’d rather be Mary than Martha, but I am also enough of a pragmatic Scot to know that once in a while the corn needs plowing and the taters won’t dig themselves – unless you do the straw thing like John.  And remember that Paul said anyone who doesn’t think they ought to work ought to give up eating while they are at it (2 Thessalonians 3:10). 

One way for us to understand the attitude the Lord expressed here is to make it a sort of allegory of the works versus grace approach to salvation.  The one thing that is necessary is faith, without which it is impossible to please God, no matter how many good deeds we do.  Mary typifies grace through faith while Martha is the type of one who tries to ascend to heaven by piling good works on top of good works. 

Understood this way, the Lord’s call to resting with and in Him makes more sense and eases our fears that we are doing something wrong by working hard and putting in the hours to provide for and care for our families, build our business, save for retirement, etc.  Isaiah said, long before, “For thus said the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel, in returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.  But you were unwilling “(Isaiah 30:15).

I think, though, for some us, there is also a lesson about giving the work we do for the world too much of a priority.  Remember how we are told to pray without ceasing?  We no longer have to sit at the feet of Jesus to attend to and hear Him, and we don’t have to lament that He isn’t walking around with us, because the Holy Spirit is walking around in us.  In others words, if we want to, we can kind of be Mary and Martha at the same time.  All we need to do is get our thinking in the right order, realize, and recognize the presence of God by His Spirit.  If we can practice giving precedence to the still, small voice over the shrill, lurid, cacophonous demands of the world, we can get Mary’s commendation and still not scorch the beans.

Keeping the Hornets Out Front

And I sent the hornet before you, which drove them out before you, the two kings of the Amorites; it was not by your sword or by your bow.  I gave you a land on which you had not labored and cities that you had not built, and you dwell in them. You eat the fruit of vineyards and olive orchards that you did not plant. -- Joshua 24:12-13

(I'm trying to get back to every-week-day posting.  I'm not sure how it will go because I'm adjusting back to a regular work schedule, trying to figure out where I might be needed and where I can help out.  Anyway...)

This is one of those statements that you read and think is a little odd.  Hornets.  I think Mel Gibson stole this for a scene in Apocalypto.  Checking Strong's and some dictionaries, it's a stinging insect, tsir`ah, like our good old hornet, which, especially in hot weather, may prove dangerous, debilitating, or deadly to a person attacked by a swarm.  If you've ever literally "stirred up a hornets' nest" -- as I have, there is no fight; it's flight.  You can see the poetic side.  No one can stand if pursued by hornets, and no enemy could stand against God's army.

The root word from which this is derived, tsara`, means "to scourge" and spoke figuratively of being stricken with leprosy.  Thus those inhabitants of Canaan who had defiled the land by their abominations and evil were driven out by Israel as with a whip in God's hand.  I think immediately of how Jesus plaited a whip and violently drove the money-changers from the temple.  They, too, fled as though hornets were after them. 

When things are going well for me, I am apt to do what Joshua warned against.  I may start thinking that I have achieved and accomplished quite a bit.  A lot of us have worked hard, made sacrifices, delayed gratification, made good decisions, etc.  We have a measure, perhaps, of economic security because of our own efforts.   The Bible does not denigrate that.  The slothful are condemned.  Paul says that one who doesn't work hadn't ought to eat.  We need to do our part while remaining humble and grateful for God's grace, His guiding hand, His protection, and His gifts to us. 

What's true in the natural is even more vital in the spiritual.  What spiritual territory we hold, what we have gained and whatever progress we have made is that much more a function of God's gracious provision for us.  Here Christ gives us His righteousness and abundant life.  We are not the ones who lived a sinless life and conquered death; nonetheless, we are offered a share in His victory and the benefits of His labor. 

As an aside, something I think I picked up from MOTT has to do with getting the devil on our side.  Israel was supposed to clear Canaan of all its previous inhabitants.  They mistakenly made a covenant of mutual protection with Gibeonites who had deceived Israel into thinking they were not residents of the Promised Land.  When the deception was known, the Gibeonites were made "hewers of wood and drawerers of water" for the benefit of the children of Israel.  Some other tribes were subdued but not entirely eradicated, and these, too, were put into forced labor for their conquerors. 

If we can overcome our adversary and stand strong and unbending against temptation, that tempter must then serve us.  It's not that we want demons following us around or heralding us like the poor girl with a "spirit of divination" in Acts 16:16-18.  We must also be careful that we are not betrayed by it at a later time.  Saul of Tarsus was that early Church's greatest adversary and persecutor.  When he was overcome by Christ, Paul became a critical part of the foundation upon which the Church has been built.  A more secular example, and one I believe UF uses, is how Germany was defeated in WWI but not overcome until the end of WWII.  Germany and Japan were overcome and became active allies of those they had sought to destroy. 

We can either be "subject to" our temptations and weaknesses if we give in to them, or we may put them in subjection to us if we resist them fully.  All the things that trouble us now, if we will stand, will serve us.

Much better to have the hornets after the other guy.