Through the month of January, we have been looking at the encounter that sisters Mary and Martha had with Jesus (Luke 10:38-42). It was all around a big dinner that Martha was slaving to prepare while her sister Mary sat at Jesus’ feet and listened to him teach. When confronted with Mary’s inactivity, Jesus said that she had chosen the better way. Ouch!
Here is the classic contrast between ‘be’ and ‘do.’ The ends of the temperament styles that we all find ourselves somewhere along the continuum. Are you a doer or a be-er? Are you about speed or soul?
“Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, Jesus said to them, ‘Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest” Mark 6:31.
Through the month of January, we have been looking at the encounter that sisters Mary and Martha had with Jesus (Luke 10:38-42). It was all around a big dinner that Martha was slaving to prepare while her sister Mary sat at Jesus’ feet and listened to him teach. When confronted with Mary’s inactivity, Jesus said that she had chosen the better way. Ouch!
Here is the classic contrast between ‘be’ and ‘do.’ The ends of the temperament styles that we all find ourselves somewhere along the continuum. Are you a doer or a be-er? Are you about speed or soul?
I come from a pastor’s home where one of my parents was a ‘Mary’ and one was a ‘Martha.’ One a ‘be-er’ and one a ‘doer.’
Edna, my mother, was a woman of prayer – her bible was filled with notes and pictures she had drawn. She loved to counsel people – I remember her on the phone with needy people who just wanted to pour out their cares on someone. She loved music – to sing and worship. She was a painter and could be alone with her art. This of course was offset by being a mother to five children and a pastor’s wife of growing churches with all their problems and challenges. It has been often said that my mother’s prayers are what made my father successful in ministry.
Harald, my father, was a man of action. He was the master of the 25-minute home visit, often doing three each evening. He worked to acquire land for new church buildings and was the general contractor for one of the new church building projects. For a church of 800 in Sherwood Park he maintained a very small support staff, doing much of the work himself. At the same time he wrote weekly in the paper and decided to start an elementary to senior high school which thrives to this day. Up to my teens, dad would go to outlying areas each Sunday afternoon to hold services for new church plants. He built a house wherever we went and at times worked each Monday for a secular employer.
Do you see yourself in either of these people? Don’t apologize for how God has made you! He has given you a personality, spiritual gifts, and his Holy Spirit to apply in the context he has placed you in.
But it is also important to know yourself and be balanced, because as Melody Froc said so capably in an earlier blog, Mary made the better choice AT THAT TIME. We are to live a balance of do and be.
If you are about soul/be, your tendency is to be lazy for the Kingdom. Remember the charge Jesus gave to you: “…go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you…” Matthew 28:19, 20. If you are neglecting Speed, then it is time to come back to balance. If you are about speed/do, your tendency is to operate in your own strength and to neglect your own inner life. Think of the words of this gospel song: “Take time to be holy, be calm in thy soul. Each thought and each motive, beneath his control. Thus, led by his Spirit to fountains of love, thou soon shalt be fitted for service above.” If you are neglecting Soul, then it is time to come back to balance.
John Cougar Mellencamp wrote in a song: “I’ve seen the balance; I see it every time I swing by.” Let’s be sensitive to what the Lord is saying for us each day!
Pastor Leon Throness
