Now as they went on their way, He entered a village; and a woman named Martha received Him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to His teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving; and she went to Him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me.” But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her.”
Luke 10:38-42
Throughout my years as a priest, I’ve had the privilege of ministering to many people in the last moments of their lives. Many times, people express their joys and their regrets to me. Sometimes they talk about “if I had it to do all over again, I would have done such and such.” I’ve never had anyone at the end of their life say to me “I wish I had spent less time with my children,” or “I wish I hadn’t gone to church as much as I did,” or “I wish I hadn’t taken that vacation,” or “I’m glad I neglected my marriage,” or “I wish I had exercised less,” or “I wish I had worked more.” It’s actually just the opposite. People express regret about not spending enough time with family, worked less, been more involved in the life of the church, or taken time to smell the roses.
Most of us live lives that are at least somewhat out of balance. Doctors have recommended an average of eight hours of sleep per night as being healthy. Many of us don’t do that. We cheat on that. It used to be that eight hours was considered a sufficient work day. And many of us don’t do that. We work more and we rest less. Because of this, we don’t get enough exercise. The rush to get everything done causes us to get “fast food” rather than cooking healthy food. It’s easy to see why so many people are struggling with health issues at young and younger ages. We are out of balance.
We are all familiar with the scales of justice. Two scales that try to balance the need for justice and the need for mercy. Most of us probably look at those scales and say to ourselves “I wish there were only two scales to balance.” We used to have a model in our home of the scales of justice and the scales actually worked. You could put something one side and it would sink lower than the other. I remember a lesson I learned as a young child with those scales—what was on each side had to be of equal wait, but not of equal size. For instance a small piece of metal weighed more than a large piece of cardboard.
The scales of life work in a similar way. In trying to balance everything, it is not size that matters but weight. Spending meaningful time with your children will outweigh the times you weren’t able to be with them. The thing that takes up the most time for most of us is work. We work many more hours than we worship, more hours than we spend with our spouses and children, more hours than we are relaxing. If we look at the scales of life, the scale that holds work would outweigh everything. If work is like a large cardboard box, taking up a lot of space on one scale, the scales can still be balanced by putting smaller things that have great value on the other side, just like putting a small piece of metal will outweigh a large box. And some of those small but valuable things we can put on the other side of the scale include emotion and faith.
When we begin a task that will take an hour and we spend the first 1-2 minutes in prayer before beginning the task, we are more likely to be efficient in accomplishing the task because we have put it under the umbrella of God. Ideally we begin each week with the celebration of the Divine Liturgy. That is two hours against 166 other hours of the week. Spending ten minutes a day praying and reading Scripture, against the other 23 hours and 50 minutes of the day. It’s not quantity of time that is needed to have God balancing our life. However, many of us struggle to spend ten minutes with God each day, and many find all kinds of reasons not to worship on Sundays.
Today’s Scripture reading is one that comes up frequently on the Prayer Team, the story of Mary and Martha. The most often heard interpretation of this story is that we need to have a Mary heart in a Martha world. In the midst of all the rushing around, we can’t forget the needful thing, which is a relationship with Jesus Christ. And the relationship is not only relegated to ten minutes a day of prayer and Scripture reading and two hours of worship on Sundays. These things serve us in that they get us under the umbrella of Christ, so that everything we are doing, whether we are consciously thinking of Him or not, is done in a way that honors Him and is in line with what we believe as Christians.
A second beautiful lesson from this story is “was all that rushing around that Martha was doing really necessary?” I heard a podcast several years ago about this story, and the presenter said, using a contemporary example, that what is Jesus said to Martha, “I came by for fellowship, stop running around putting out the fine China and let’s just order a pizza.” Sometimes we get so weighed down by things that are unnecessary. Regarding dinner parties as an example, most people remember the fellowship far longer than they remember the food. In trying to balance life, we need to be more critical in looking at what is actually important.
An important exercise to repeat periodically is an audit of our time. We can set our phones to let us know how much screen time we are having, and most of us would probably be appalled with how much time we spend staring at a phone screen. Some prefer texting over actual conversation. It is important to make sure that we balance our scales with sufficient (not equal, but sufficient) time to spend with God, with family, to rest, as well as to work. And it is important to remember that not all things are equal. The large chunk of time that goes to working can still be balanced out when we spend sufficient quantity and quality of time with the other more precious things in life, the small precious medal can still outweigh the large box.
Lord, You are the needful thing. Above everything else in my life is the place where You are supposed to stand. Many times, I feel out of balance. And in those moments, it’s probably because I am not spending enough time with You. Put in my mind the thought that the scales of life are best balanced when I spend precious time with You. Help me to balance out the heavy load of work—both professional work and work around the house, chores and other tasks of life—with quality time with family and friends, as well as time to rest. Help me to be focused so that I am not wasting time. Most of all, help me to put all my time and all my tasks under the umbrella of Your commandments, Your love and Your grace. Amen.
Consider how you can better balance things, remembering that even small amounts of the things that are precious—God, family, personal time—can balance out larger things. We need them to.
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