Word for Wednesday
But one thing is needful, and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her. Luke 10:42
A Presbyterian evangelist of the 1800s, Charles Finney, once told of some obstacles that occurred while he was pastor of a particular church. On one occasion, as he was holding Gospel meetings, the meetings had to be interrupted for the women’s monthly sewing circle. It made no difference when Finney told them that there were people who were under conviction of sin and interested in being saved; they still insisted on cancelling the meetings for their sewing circle. When the same thing happened a month later, as the women’s group refused to give up their sewing circle time, Finney decided it was time to move on. He could not tolerate those who would put a sewing circle ahead of the need of lost souls. In the matter of spiritual priorities, do we have things in the right order?
Martha was not holding a sewing circle, that is for sure. She had an important Guest for dinner. In fact, no more important Guest could she possibly entertain, and she went to great lengths to make sure that the meal and the preparations were the very best that she could provide. There was much work involved, and normally Mary would do her share in preparing for a meal when company was in. But not this time. As the Lord Jesus sat in the house speaking to those around him, Mary stationed herself at His feet and fastened her attention on His words. She ignored Martha’s hints for her to come and help with the preparations. Possibly the meal was taking longer than usual to get ready, and that would add to Martha’s frustration. So she appealed to the Lord Jesus to direct Mary to help her. His response, in today’s text, is a great lesson to Martha and to us that there is one priority that must always be Number One, regardless of our plans and our desires.
Note that the Lord Jesus said Mary had chosen that good part. It was a deliberate choice that she had made. She knew about the requirements for the meal preparations, but chose something more important. Cooking a meal and setting a table could not compete with hearing the words of the Lord Jesus. When it comes to our own spiritual priorities, it is also a matter of personal choice. Some of those choices should be obvious. We know it is better to attend a meeting of the Assembly than to attend a hockey game, better to read our Bible than to read a fashion magazine, better to spend time in prayer than in playing a video game, better to tell the children a Bible story than to allow them to run about the streets. But what about some of the things that appear more important? For example, is it OK to work overtime on a meeting night so we can afford to give more to the Lord? We can easily justify – to ourselves – some of the things that we do that actually take us away from the feet of the Lord Jesus. But they are not the better part.
We can never find anything more important to do than to listen to the words of the Lord Jesus. -Jim MacIntosh