What is a distraction?
It is something that takes our attention away
from what we are supposed to be doing.
The meaning of this word in Greek is
literally to be pulled in every direction.
Henry Nolan is a famous author and theologian.
He once said that while he was driving
through Los Angeles, he felt as if he
were driving through a giant dictionary.
Words everywhere.
Sounds everywhere.
Signs everywhere.
All saying, use me, take me, buy me,
drink me, smell me, touch me, kiss me,
and even sleep with me.
Just words everywhere.
Distractions.
One after the other.
We all face that one time or another
in our lives.
When I think about Bethany, it is not
just a home away from home for Jesus
or a place of transformation and change because
of a moment and an encounter and a
word from the Lord Jesus that Mary and
Martha experienced, but it is also a place
that deals with the issue of priorities in
our lives and how to deal with distractions.
In Luke chapter 10, when Jesus shows up
in Bethany to spend some time with Martha
and with Mary, Mary rushed to sit at
the feet of Jesus and just to be
with him while Martha was fixing food in
the kitchen.
I can even imagine myself like Martha to
be concerned about so many things because there
is Jesus with his disciples and they need
to fix some coffee and something to eat
and dessert and there is the main meal
and all the things need to be prepared
and even bread needs to be baked and
who will sit where on the table and
who will help me.
Before long she was distracted of trying to
fix the food and with this concern that
becomes an attitude in her heart of all
the things that need to be done.
Her kitchen became a distraction for her.
Sometimes when we think about life as it
happens with you and with I, we all
face the same kind of things like that.
That will take our attention away from what
is really important in your life and also
in my life.
When I look at this passage, I believe
there are three things which is very important.
The first one is that the Lord Jesus
should always be our first priority before anything
else.
When Jesus entered that house, Mary, the first
thing that she was doing, she gave Jesus
her undivided attention.
She stopped what she was doing because the
master had arrived and she wanted to be
with him.
It made me think about Nicholas Herman who
was a monk who worked in the kitchen
of a monastery in Paris many years ago.
He became known as brother Lawrence.
He wrote a little book called The Practice
of the Presence of God.
He once said the following, I'm reading, he
said, I have looked on God as the
goal and the end of all the thoughts
and affections of the soul.
I've come to see that my only business
is to live as though there were none
but he and I in this world.
I've sought only to live for him.
The first priority in your life and mine
should be that Jesus gets our undivided attention.
And secondly, is to sit at his feet
and listen to his voice and hear what
he is saying to us.
What is on his heart for you and
for I today?
And lastly, if we give him our full
attention and if we sit at his feet
to listen to his voice and hearing him
speak to us, receiving his word, we will
receive also a blessing that will not be
taken away from us.
He said, I will give you something which
will, the good that will not be taken
away from you.
If you're struggling with anxiety and you come
to Jesus and he gives you Philippians chapter
four, verse six to nine, he gives you
peace.
If you need wisdom and he gives you
an answer, you receive the wisdom that you
need.
It will not be taken away from you.
So whatever your need might be, if you
come to Jesus and he speaks to you,
he answers you, he touches you by sitting
at his feet, you will receive a blessing
from him that will not be taken away
from you.
So what is the kitchen that withholds you
from sitting at the feet of Jesus or
to be so concerned about many things that
you cannot give your undivided attention to the
one, to the master, to the one that
loves you so much.
Can it be your own goals, your career,
your own success, the pursuing of that, could
it be sin, relationships, whatever the case might
be, it could be anything.
The kitchen from Martha became a distraction, but
with you and I, it might be a
football, it might be a basketball, it might
be a relationship, it might be something else
completely, but it takes us away, almost like
pulling us in different directions.
When I think about Bethany, this was the
place where Jesus was actually saying and teaching
what he was modeling himself by sitting at
the feet of his own father, by giving
his father the undivided attention that he so
deserved from his son.
And because of that, his father also gave
something that could not be taken away from
Jesus.
He said, this is my beloved son and
the father used him to become the savior
of the rest of this world that we
will celebrate this coming few days.
I want to close by just reading a
quote hundreds of years later after brother Lawrence.
Joy Davidman, the wife of C.S. Lewis,
she said it this way, to want God
so much that everything else becomes irrelevant.
So Bethany, a place which is called a
home away from home, a place of transformation
and change, a place of surrender when Mary
was washing the feet of Jesus, anointing with
oil and with her hair, but also a
place that deals with distractions and what is
really important in your life and mine, the
priorities of life, is to give our undivided
attention to our master, to sit long enough
at his feet to listen to his voice
and to hear his word, understand his heart,
his message, to receive a blessing from him
that cannot be taken away from us.
May God bless you in this day as
you reflect upon Bethany and as you prepare
yourself for these coming days where Jesus is
about to enter into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday.
May God bless you until we see you
again.