38 As Jesus and the disciples continued on their way to Jerusalem, they came to a certain village where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. 39 Her sister, Mary, sat at the Lord’s feet, listening to what he taught. 40 But Martha was distracted by the big dinner she was preparing. She came to Jesus and said, “Lord, doesn’t it seem unfair to you that my sister just sits here while I do all the work? Tell her to come and help me.” (Luke 10:38-40)
How distracted are you? There is a popular idea among many writers and speakers called the tyranny of the urgent. Basically, it boils down to the demands of the urgent outweighing the demands of the important. We want to spend more time with our family, but we have a huge deadline at work looming over our heads. We want to work out, but we are too caught up with the demands of the everyday. Just like Martha, we trade in the important for the urgent and the long term for the short.
And this is not necessarily bad all the time. Yes, dinner needs made and yes deadlines need met. Yet, we must learn to be a little more Mary and a little less Martha. Mary had the same demands weighing on her. She had the same amount of hours in the day. What made her approach different? She prioritized the important. To her, Jesus was a non-negotiable. No amount of dinner or duty could move Him from His rightful place in her life and we must learn to do the same.
“The best leaders don’t do more – they do more of what matters most” -Craig Groeschel
We all have things in our lives we must simply have the courage to resist doing – to look deep into the concrete stare of the urgent and say “no”. Any time we say no to one thing, we are really saying yes to another. Recently, I thought about the things I spend my time doing and weighed them with one simple question: “will I be glad I invested my time here when I die?” Talk about a bucket of ice water. Take a step out of your cycle of chaos and ask the same. Then, create a plan to shift your goals and purpose. This is by no means a simple task that takes a few hours, but a soul shifting act to pursue daily your full God-given redemptive potential. The greatest weapon the devil uses on us perhaps, is not making us do bad, but making us surrender to the busy.
41 But the Lord said to her, “My dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these details! 42 There is only one thing worth being concerned about. Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10:41-42)
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