I always hated the sermons about Mary and Martha and how Mary was so much better because she chose to sit at Jesus' feet while Martha, the task oriented person, was busy doing stuff. Yesterday I was listening to Focus on the Family and I heard a new extended version of this story. You can listen to it at: http://listen.family.org/focuswebradio/A000001050.cfm. The broadcast was called "Encounters with Jesus."
In between the first story of Mary and Martha and another mention of them is the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead. The first mention is in Luke 10:38-42 and is when Martha complains to Jesus about having to do all the work while Mary sits at his feet. The next time these two are mentioned is the story of Lazarus being raised from the dead and Mary and Martha both having a significant encounter with Jesus in John 11. The next chapter, John 12, begins with Jesus being at Mary and Martha's home again. The amazing thing I had never realized was that it says, "Here a dinner was given in Jesus' honor. Martha served while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him. Then Mary took a bottle of pure nard, an expensive perfume, and poured it on Jesus' feet and wiped his feet with her hair."
Here it shows that Martha served Jesus but this time her attitude about the serving changed. She did it out of love for Jesus (as a part of her worship and honor of him) instead of doing it as a duty or work or obligation. Martha didn't need to become a Mary, she just needed to worship Jesus in the way he made her without complaining or trying to get others to be like her.
This frees me up so much because as you can probably guess, I'm a task oriented person who serves others as a way of making them feel special. I can still do this but it needs to be out of worship to Jesus (do everything as unto the Lord) and not out of "why isn't everyone else being like me" attitude. We can all worship Jesus in our own way, it just needs to be authentic. Everyone in the story, Lazarus, Martha, and Mary, had changed the way they worshiped after the encounter at the tomb. Extravagant worship can be expressed in a variety of ways. Let's all be free to worship Jesus any way our heart wants to express it.
Yesterday, I took Amanda's clothes out of the dryer so I could put mine in. I put them in a basket by the dryer and left to do some shopping and take Breanna to the dentist. When we came back home, Cinnamon was in the clothes basket! I'm sure Amanda wasn't too thrilled about the dog hair and smell on her clean clothing but it was so cute we had to take a picture. I guess the clothes were a warm place to sleep after coming out of the dryer.
You can see Breanna's website at this link: http://ghs.goshenschools.org/departments/business/courses/web/spring08/fifth/
html_project/Brenneman,%20Breanna%20HTML%20Project/index.htm
She had to create a website for her class at school. She did a wonderful job. It is all about her family although she got some of the facts mixed up it is still good. You can see her blog at breannabanana.vox.com if you want to know what she is up to. She just started it and is keeping up with posting pretty regular even if she is busy with school stuff.
We love the opportunity to connect with this little one once in a while. She is so cute! She does have her crying spells. You can pray for her and her very tired mother. She doesn't sleep very well at night and has crying spells that last 1/2 hour up to 3 hours sometimes. Amanda is very tired as you can imagine. We like to give her a break once in a while so she can rest or get something done around the house.
I took one picture of Breanna in the pit during the performance but since they have a mesh net over the pit to keep objects from falling on the players, it was hard to get her. The orchestra sounded wonderfully professional.
The bottom picture is of only A-H inductees. A photographer from the local newspaper took their pictures in 3 sets.
We took a picture of the girls in pink so we had to take a picture of the guys being silly!
Last Sunday, a dance team (the one Breanna and I were in last year that did the One Holy Night dance at Christmas time) was at our church. They did a dance called, "Pieces of the Father." It was awesome! Someone from a church we used to go to many years ago was there because their granddaughter, whom they are raising along with a grandson because their daughter and another grandson were killed in a car accident 7 years ago). I started talking to them before church. They were asking what Bob and I were doing since we last saw each other. I told them about Bob's work being very slow and how he has a few side jobs lined up but no work with his boss. They were very interested in talking to Bob about a side job they wanted done. They talked with Bob after church for a long time. Yesterday Bob went over to their house. They have at least 3 weeks of work for him to do! God is so amazing! We could not have planned that out if we would have tried for 3 years to make it happen.
Will you praise the Lord with me?
