Responsibility

Luke 10: 38-42
As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!” “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one.[a] Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

The story of Jesus at the home of Martha and Mary. I am quite sure most of you know how this story goes. If you do not, you can find it from the verses listed above. Most of the time when a guest comes to our home, we will do our best to make them feel welcomed. Prepare them drinks, food, talk to them and what not. It is almost expected of us to do such things. But where did this expectation come from? Who taught us we must do these things? Well the most common answer would be our parents. Whether verbally or by example, it is just something that is done in our “culture”.

For Martha, it was in her “culture” to ensure the guest of the house has a good impression of her hospitality. Okay let us see what happens next. Martha complains about her sister being “lazy” and stresses out about the preparations. Jesus in reply tells her that she is placing too much importance on the wrong things.

YOU might be wondering, “why are you telling us this maaaaaaaaaaaaan ._.”. The question is this, is there anything in your “culture” that is distracting you from God? Alright this part of the post will seem a bit stereotypical, but to a certain degree has a great sense of truth in it. As ASIANS, parents most of the time say to us “you study hard, you do well in school, do well in school then get a good job, get a good job then make the family proud and please your parents as a ‘responsible’ child”. Now that is just our culture cause from my experience in uk, that doesn’t seem to be the ‘norm’. I am very sure it is not a biblical thing as well cause I am quite sure if you do not continue to a higher education, it is not a “sin”. So I guess we can deem it as worldly expectation?

Alright now to the chunky bits. What I mentioned about above is just one of the worldly expectations that many of us are expected to meet. There are many others and it is different for each individual depending on your social surrounding. To what extent are you willing to meet these expectations? Should meeting these expectations even be something important? So most of us grow up spending a lot of time meeting those expectations. All the little left over bits of time that we have or when we are “free”, we slot God in.

Going back to the story, so we stopped where Martha asked Jesus to reprimand Mary. But wait, He did not. Instead He says to her that Mary has chosen the right thing. You would imagine Jesus to say to Mary, “go be a responsible sister and a ‘good’ testimony and help her out” but He did not. SOMETIMES the “responsibilities” we have in this world are not important and we need to be in tune with the Holy Spirit to discern well in this. In the situation of Martha and Mary, it was spiritual nurturing against household responsibilities. It was okay that the food came out later, or that the guest had to be a bit thirsty.

We need to have ourselves checked that the reason we strive our best in our "responsibilities as students" is done as an act of honouring God and offered up to Him as a sweet and fragrant offering - done in obedience. If we fail to do that, it won't be suprising that we end up being Martha, where we totally fail to prioritize our responsibilities in recognizing which act would have substantial spiritual nourishment! (Especially when it comes to acts that ask you to choose between studying or not)

To end it all, I would just like to stress the importance of seeking God’s will out in all things. I am NOT implying that we should not study at all nor am I saying education is not important but rather WHY is it important? Would you give up listening to God to fulfill those responsibilities and worldly expectations like Martha? Or would you be like Mary and listen first then work it out?

Peace out peeps!

- Alex Tan

Images taken from:
http://www.wpclipart.com/religion_mythology/new_testament/illustrations_2/Jesus_Christ_with_Mary_and_Martha.png.html
http://onproductmanagement.net/2011/07/13/expectations-and-product-leadership/
http://gratiafied.blogspot.com/2011/04/gods-will-is-that-you-stop-trying-to.html