Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things.
There is need of only one thing.
Was it wrong to serve? We tend to read this story as saying that Martha was wrong to busy herself with serving when Jesus was there. We assume the suggestion is that both women should have sat at the feet of Jesus and listened. Perhaps this would have been for the best. But then Jesus wouldn't have enjoyed the hospitality Martha showed him. This was a genuine good, and not, at least as we understand it, what was directly criticized.
Martha's heart was in too many places at once. She was burdened with serving but was envious of what Mary choose to do. She was torn in too many different directions. It was this, not the work itself, that left her anxious and worried. What if she realized that the one needful thing was present in her household, and served him from that realization?
If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ (see First Peter 4:11).
Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men (see Colossians 3:23)
It may well be that to contemplate the Lord's words at his feet is higher than works of service. But both of these are necessary in their time. If serving is neglected, Jesus is neglected, and in turn all of the poor and the least of his people who are in him are neglected (see Matthew 25:40). The one thing necessary need not be sacrificed in performing acts of service. But service itself must draw its strength about purpose from sitting at the feet of Jesus. For to serve him as a stranger is less than to serve him as a beloved friend.
Paul understood the need to base mission on revelation.
But when he, who from my mother’s womb had set me apart
and called me through his grace,
was pleased to reveal his Son to me,
so that I might proclaim him to the Gentiles,
I did not immediately consult flesh and blood,
Having experienced this initial revelation and the three years after in Damascus where he let it settle in take hold of him he got about his work and scarcely stopped his missionary service at all if he could avoid it. He certainly did not neglect contemplative prayer. But neither was he busied with it so much that his mission was impacted. He had the one thing necessary in his prayer and in his service. And it was only on this basis that he was able to strike the balance, the unique balance, to which God was calling him in his individuality.
And I was unknown personally to the churches of Judea
that are in Christ;
they only kept hearing that “the one who once was persecuting us
is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.”
So they glorified God because of me.
God knows us as deeply as he knew Paul. He wants to guide us along the everlasting way. He has a plan for us that he made with the knowledge of our inmost being which he himself formed. What the plan is differs from one person to another. But it is always his desire that, in service and in prayer, we choose the one thing necessary.
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