A, godly young mother, one of our precious immigrants from Sri Lanka , coveted in her broken Danish a “Bible word”.  This I gladly complied with though the communication was limited to a skype dialogue.   Praise God for that invention, so we opened for that connection and looked up in our Bibles, too, with the insatiable desire of “newborn babes” for “the pure milk of the word” (1 Pet. 2:2).

It so happened that we listened to the instructive story of Martha and Mary in Luke 10:38-42 applying the word to our own situation.  What about joining us?  We have not been quite fair to busy Martha whereas Mary is the spiritual heroine.

Literally it says in Greek and fortunately also in English and German that Mary also sat at His feet and heard His word, in other words, as “Martha welcomed Him into her house” she did what Mary eventually also did: sitting at His feet.  Martha thus set the pace, but she was (at the same time) “distracted with much serving”, which the Lord lovingly dealt with.

My wife often says, “I´m a Martha”, for she´s so concerned about our guests, even if we are all supposed to “relax” at our seats listening to His word at our weekly Bible fellowship.  But as “Jesus loved Martha” (John 11:5) he certainly loves every busy housewife or godly hostess. So we agreed, my Tamil friend and I, that her babies deserve top priority, but when they take their sweet naps, it could be a good time for her and her Bible reading which equals the sitting at His feet.

Our dear godly sisters are so loving “with much serving”, aren´t they? and I sometimes  say, “Forget the serving and let´s have fellowship”, and it works beautifully.  That happened yesterday when visiting a sick Iraqi woman.  O, what a gift spiritual fellowship is.  But then finally I´m back to earth and suggest with a smile, “What about a cup of coffee?”

November 5, 2015 – jn