Series: From Pastor’s DeskNumber: Vol. 14, No. 13
Beloved: grace and mercy be multiplied to you from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour. I am delighted to welcome you to the last week of the month of July 2025. I pray that God will daily keep your heart fixed on those things that truly matter in life, so that you will not waste your life on irrelevancies. Amen.
As we see in the bible, it is possible for us to get ourselves occupied with the wrong thing and still think we are doing so for the Lord. That may be because we do not know how to handle things in the order of their importance or urgency. And where that is the case, we may find ourselves losing things that could change our lives forever while running after things that could only give us temporary satisfaction.
For instance, the bible tells something that happened when Jesus visited the house of Mary and Martha one day. Look at how it is reported by Luke in his gospel:”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. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” (Luke 10:38-42NIV)
What is this account showing us? It is showing us something about misplaced priorities. And who misplaced her priorities in the account? It was Martha. How? Did she do anything bad by working hard to entertain Jesus and His disciples on that occasion? No! But she should first of all have taken out time to speak with the Lord and to also listen to Him. This would have helped her in knowing the right way and time to entertain Him.Some of us too often make the same mistake when people visit us.
We want to be in a hurry to entertain them without first spending time to converse with them and learn their real reason for visiting us. And we may end up not settling down to have any serious discussion with them till they leave, just because we want to entertain them. That is not how to build a good and meaningful relationship.Well, while Martha was busy trying to entertain Jesus, her sister, Mary, sat down to learn from Him.
That, of course, offended her so much that she could not hide it. Therefore, she came to the Lord to tell Him to rebuke Mary for not knowing her priorities and to send her to assist her in preparing what they would use in entertaining Him and His disciples.But instead for the Lord to do what she wanted, He simply told her that she was actually the one that had misplaced her priorities.
In other words, she too should have sat down like her sister to learn from Him. Then she would have gained better knowledge on how to entertain Him and be praised. And that knowledge would have stayed with her for life. But she missed her opportunity to learn and become a better person that day. What a shame!In any case, the point of this is that we must never allow any good thing we are doing for God to hinder us from giving adequate attention to Him, His word and prayer.
Otherwise, we will not know Him and how to serve Him better. And that may even make us lose the rewards of the so-called good things we think we are doing for Him.So, let us always get our priorities right, as children of God. Our relationship with Him must always come before our service to Him. And may our hearts be duly strengthened never to forget this. Amen.Have a splendid week.
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