Time to listen

Master, speak, your servant heareth,

Waiting for your gracious word. Frances Ridley Havergal

 

Read Luke 10:38—42

I have heard people say that they are no good at doing nothing. They have to be busy. So they take this story as a reproof. They think they must learn to be a Mary, by which they mean that they have to be more at peace with themselves when they do nothing. But Mary is not doing nothing. She is listening to Jesus. That’s not doing nothing. If she had laptop in hand she could probably write out whatever Jesus said to her. In her journal I would read something about God the Father, far more gracious than she had previously known; making himself more immediately knowable, knowable in Jesus himself; something of herself, more in need of grace than she had previously realised, but far more loved than she had ever suspected; something of Martha, far more beautiful than either of them had ever seen.

 

Lord, you have gifted me with time, time to work and the energy to expend; time to be quiet and listen to you, and to pray as I do now. I thank you for both, for the active life and for the life of attending to you. I thank you for Mary’s choice. For her focus upon you. I pray for her listening ear. I pray that I may not rush away from this time with you. For I can be gone again from this time, and not have stayed to hear anything at all. It can be as though I was never here. I know, I say, and I believe that your word to me is more precious and also more true than any other that I could hear. So speak to me your gracious word tonight.