You Were Serving Him and Still Missing Him

You did it for Him.

That is what makes this harder to see. You were not wasting your life. You were working, building, serving, carrying responsibilities and doing things that actually mattered. People depended on you. There were problems that needed solving and things that would not get done unless you did them. So you kept moving, and somewhere along the way you began to assume that because the work was good, the pace must be good too.

Then one day you realized you had become very busy doing things for God and strangely unfamiliar with simply being with Him.

In Luke 10, Jesus entered a village and Martha received Him into her house. Her sister Mary sat at Jesus' feet and heard His word, while Martha was "cumbered about much serving." That phrase matters because Martha was not distracted by something obviously wrong. She was serving the very Person sitting in her home. The meal mattered. Hospitality mattered. There was real work to be done.

But good work can still pull you away from the better thing.

Martha kept serving until the service began changing her. What started as hospitality became frustration. She looked at Mary sitting at Jesus' feet and could no longer see devotion. She saw someone who was not helping.

Eventually she came to Jesus and said, "Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me."

There is more in that sentence than exhaustion. Martha had become so burdened by what she believed needed to be done that she began questioning whether Jesus cared. She was serving Him while becoming frustrated with Him.

That can happen more easily than we admit.

You start carrying something because you believe God gave it to you. You work hard because you want to steward it well. You become responsible because responsibility is good. But slowly the work moves from your hands into your identity. You stop asking whether God is still asking you to carry everything you have picked up. You stop noticing how long it has been since you were quiet before Him without an agenda. Then resentment appears.

Why am I doing all of this alone?

Why does nobody else care as much as I do?

Why are they allowed to sit while I am still carrying everything?

Maybe the problem is not that everyone else needs to become as burdened as you are. Maybe the burden itself has become part of the problem.

Jesus answered her, "Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful."

Many things.

One thing.

Martha had filled her attention with many legitimate concerns and lost sight of the one thing Jesus called necessary. He did not tell her that service was worthless. He did not condemn work, responsibility or hospitality. He corrected the order.

Mary had chosen "that good part."

She understood something Martha had forgotten in the pressure of getting everything ready: Jesus was already there.

Martha may have believed she would sit down once the work was finished. Once the food was prepared. Once the room was right. Once everyone had what they needed. Then she could listen.

But there will always be one more thing.

That is how people go years without noticing that their relationship with God has become mostly work done in His name.

You tell yourself you will pray when things calm down. You will spend time in Scripture once the current season passes. You will become still once the business is stable, the children are older, the project launches, the problem is solved or the pressure finally lifts.

But what if it never does?

What if there is always another task waiting when you stand up?

You can spend your entire life preparing the room and never sit down with the One you invited into it.

That is the danger of useful work. Useless distractions are easier to identify. You know when you have wasted an hour scrolling or avoided something important. But productivity can hide from conviction because it gives you evidence that you are being responsible. You can point to what you built, who you helped, what you provided and how much you carried.

Meanwhile, your soul is starving five feet away from the table.

The problem is not ambition. The problem is not discipline. The problem is not building something difficult or carrying responsibility well. Scripture does not praise laziness.

The problem is when doing becomes easier than abiding.

Work gives you something measurable. Prayer often does not. Work lets you finish a task and point to what changed. Sitting before God may leave you with nothing visible except a quieter heart. Work gives you control over effort. Presence requires you to stop controlling long enough to listen.

For some people, that is much harder.

Because stillness has a way of revealing what movement helps you avoid.

When you finally sit down, you notice how tired you actually are. You notice the fear beneath the ambition. You notice how much of your worth has become attached to being needed. You notice that some of what you call responsibility is really your refusal to trust anyone else with the outcome.

So you stay busy.

And because the work is good, nobody tells you to stop.

That is why Jesus had to say it to Martha.

"Martha, Martha."

There is tenderness in the repetition. He was not humiliating her. He was calling her back from something that had quietly taken too much of her attention.

You are careful and troubled about many things.

Maybe He could say the same thing to you.

Not because the things do not matter, but because you have allowed all of them to matter at once. You are carrying tomorrow while working on today. You are answering conversations that have not happened yet, solving problems that have not arrived and rehearsing outcomes you cannot control. Your body is in one room and your mind is in six others.

Then you wonder why you cannot hear God clearly.

Maybe He has not become quieter.

Maybe your life has become louder.

Mary chose something Martha could have chosen too. She sat down.

That sounds almost too simple until you understand what it required. She had to allow unfinished work to remain unfinished. She had to let Martha think she was not doing enough. She had to accept that something in the house might not be perfect because Jesus was worth more than the appearance of having everything under control.

That takes faith too.

Sometimes sitting at the feet of Jesus is an act of trust because it means believing the world can continue turning while you stop carrying it for a moment.

You do not need to abandon your responsibilities. You do not need to become less disciplined or stop building what God has placed in your hands.

You need to remember the order.

You were never meant to build a life for God that leaves no room for God inside it.

The work is not the relationship.

The calling is not the relationship.

The ministry is not the relationship.

The people you serve are not the relationship.

He is.

And if everything you are doing for Him is slowly taking you away from Him, something has become disordered no matter how good it looks from the outside.

There will always be many things.

Jesus said one thing is needful.

Sit down long enough to remember which one.

Prayer

One word, every week.

Scripture, reflection, and one thing to carry with you.