Walking With Christ

Luke 10:40–42  (40)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.”  (41)But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, (42)but one thing is necessary.  Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”(ESV)

Being unavailable feels wrong when you’ve trained yourself to measure love by response time.

We live in a world that treats silence like neglect.  If the phone rings, answer.  If the message comes in, respond.  If someone asks, explain.  If someone needs, show up.  If someone is disappointed, fix it.

There’s a place for availability.  Love isn’t cold.  Love isn’t careless.  Love doesn’t hide behind selfishness and call it peace.

But there’s also a point where availability becomes slavery.

Martha wasn’t doing evil work.  She was serving.  She was preparing.  She was trying to care for people.  Her problem wasn’t that she did something bad.  Her problem was that her service had become anxious, distracted, and resentful.

That’s where many of us live.

We’re not angry because we hate people.  We’re angry because we’re exhausted from trying to meet every need while pretending we don’t have any of our own.

Mary chose the better portion because she understood something Martha had forgotten in the noise:  being near Jesus mattered more than being impressive for Jesus.

That’s a hard truth for people who are used to carrying things.

Sometimes the gift of being unavailable is that it exposes what has been using you.

Not serving through you.

Using you.

The constant demand.  The fear of disappointing people.  The addiction to being needed.  The quiet belief that if you aren’t useful, you aren’t valuable.

But Jesus never treated Mary as lazy for sitting at His feet.

He defended her.

There are moments when you need to let Jesus defend your stillness against the accusations in your own head.

No, you don’t have to answer everything.

No, you don’t have to explain every boundary.

No, you don’t have to apologize for needing quiet.

No, you don’t have to perform exhaustion as proof that you care.

There’s a holy kind of unavailability that makes room for attention.  Not attention to self in the selfish sense, but attention to Christ.

You can’t sit at His feet while running in every direction.

So today, let the better portion be enough.