Fish and Feet

Guiding Prayer For Our Season of Fasting: 

Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those that trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom,the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.

Myself in Truth

Holy God, at your feet I sit.  May the hurriedness of the day not rob me of my closeness to you. Amen 

Nurtured and Nurturing

Gracious God we pray that you might bless our families and selves with an awareness of your presence in our homes and in our lives. Amen

The Gathered

Gathering God, as we gather, may the busyness of life fall away and may our focus be on your presence that your will might be done in our church and our community. Amen

Challenge

Read Luke 10:38-42. Who do you relate to in this story? Try this week to focus on the presence of Christ in our everyday lives and activities. Use the focusing prayer in this post as a reminder of our need for God's guidance in times of trial and even in the most mundane of tasks. 

Martha

Luke 10:38-42

38 While they were traveling, He entered a village, and a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her home. 39 She had a sister named Mary, who also sat at the Lord’s feet and was listening to what He said. 40 But Martha was distracted by her many tasks, and she came up and asked, “Lord, don’t You care that my sister has left me to serve alone? So tell her to give me a hand.”

41 The Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things,42 but one thing is necessary. Mary has made the right choice, and it will not be taken away from her.”

I would like to say I'm a Mary, but I'm mostly a Martha.  But I think that Martha's are given a bad reputation from this story.  You see I think I can be fun and funny and easygoing about some areas of my life, but about others I am wound as tight as a spring.  Don't we all have a little Martha in us?

My husband can get away with murder because he's not from around here and he has this nice South African accent.  He could say "Take all the male babies,throw them in the river and feed them to the crocodiles!" and people would comment on how nice his accent is and then lovingly tell him something along the lines of "Sweety, that's just not how we do things around here." and all would be right with the world.  So, he's pretty laid back. Not so worried about deadlines or status or money.  Pretty much a big ol' Mary.

That is until it comes to his fish tank. Gavin has around a 100 gallon salt water fish tank. It has rock and coral and an anemone and about 5 fish, because all research says that you should not overpopulate your tank and Gavin takes that seriously.  It has a trigger fish, two half nemos (clownfish that have one stripe instead of two) a wras and a yellow tang. Excuse me for not capitalizing their names, but they're fish and I could care less. 

In the fish domain, I am the Mary.  I go to the fish store and say "Oh that's a pretty polka dotted trigger fish" and Gavin looks at me with an "Are you crazy?" expression and proceeds to tell me how that particular breed of trigger is very aggressive and would fight with the other trigger fish.  Then I see this beautiful Martha Stewart green coral that kind of looks like the underside of a mushroom and I say "Ooh pretty, I want one!" and he says "our fish would destroy that within a week." That is also why we can't have a blue "Dory" fish, or a two striped "Nemo" clownfish, a crab or shrimp or those cute blue starfish, because everything in our tank has to be in complete "aggression balance." He chose one fish that he really loved and then all the rest  have to be equally or slightly less aggressive than that one.

Gavin spends hours a week cleaning and perfecting this tank.  If you see either one of us at the ABC store it's because he has to add vodka to the tank to keep the algae from taking over. It's called vodka dosing. We even have a fish hospital. I am not kidding.  It is a smaller tank that he puts fish with spots or who are acting unusually in, so that he can medicate and quarantine them.  I have actually been requested to pray for a hospitalized fish. Martha, Martha, Martha.

We all have our Martha domains.  And here, the real Martha is taking charge of her domain which is the home and hospitality.  But in her busyness, she forgets that the most important thing is to listen to Jesus and to sit at his feet and soak him in.  Mary gets it.  Mary gets that at the feet of Jesus is the most important place she could ever be.

This week, wherever your Martha domain may be, I invite you to take some time to sit at the feet of Jesus.  One way to do this is to have a quick focusing prayer to remind you, that we always are in the presence of Christ.  So in those moments of busyness, I challenge you to say this one or make up a focusing prayer of your own.

Focusing Prayer: Jesus, to your presence I draw near.  As I sit at your feet, reveal your desire for me in this moment and in my life.  Amen