Anxious and worried about many things

"Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things......." I can relate to Martha. In fact, if you replace the phrase "anxious and worried" with the word "preoccupied" I can say it applies to me. Well, maybe you can change the "Martha, Martha" part too. I don't want to admit that I'm anxious and worried. But I if I really think about it I have to ask myself; why I am preoccupied with so many things if I'm not anxious and worried about them? It's true though, and I find that I dwell on certain things even more when there's something unfair about it.

Which brings me back to this Sunday's Gospel reading: My sense of justice tells me that it's not fair that Martha was stuck with all the work. The Gospel says plainly that she was "burdened" with much serving. Part of me expects that Jesus should have told Mary to take Martha's place and give Martha a well deserved rest. We don't know exactly what Martha was doing, but we can be pretty sure that she was doing what she thought was the right thing to do. Jesus didn't seem worried about how things were going to turn out though; and I remember that He fed the multitudes with a few loaves of bread and fish.(not once but twice!) When I remember this, His words to  Martha take on more weight and I feel that I have to re-evaluate my sense of justice. Even though hospitality was considered a virtue in ancient times, Martha's solution to the problem of what to do with so many guests was not the only solution. I suspect that if she asked Jesus what He wanted to do about serving the crowd He might have told her not to worry about it, but to sit down and visit with Him. I don't think she asked. She probably immediately set about doing what she thought the "right" thing to do was - which, just to re-iterate, was merely to serve Jesus and those that were with Him.

I find this to be an important point that I must consider more deeply: Martha was only trying to serve the Lord. I understand that instead of running around like a mad woman, she would have been better off sitting down and listening to our Lord. But if Jesus corrected her when her root cause of her anxiety and worry was simply to be of service to the Lord, can all those things that I am preoccupied with be pleasing to My Lord?