Lessons from Mary & Martha
By Rachel Head
I heard a lesson recently that really struck a chord with me. It was talking about five people and lessons we can learn from each of them. The account takes place in John 12 which is probably one of the greatest examples of devotion and service. The two people that I want to focus on are Martha and Mary (the sisters of Lazarus). When we think about these two women, we think of Martha as the “bad person” and Mary as the “good person”. This is because Martha was the one cooking and not listening to Jesus while Mary was listening to Jesus and focusing on Him. But what if neither of them were doing wrong but instead demonstrating two different lessons for us? I would like to think about Martha's hands and Mary’s heart.
Martha’s hands demonstrated the act of service. In Mark 14, it makes it clear that they were at someone else’s house eating so the sisters were guests. Even in our time, the guest is not expected to help prepare the food or serve it. But that was what Martha was doing. There is a lesson in priorities with Martha. She was able to serve both others and Jesus. There are two types of personalities: the people who cannot sit still for long and have to be doing something while there are the more sedentary people who are fine not doing things all the time. There is nothing wrong with being like Martha as long as we are serving others AND God. As teenage/young adult Christian girls, a question we can ask ourselves to have more of the attitude of a servant would be this: “What is it that I can do in my congregation?” The things that pop up when we ask that need to be things that we work on. Because we are a part of the solution of growing our local congregation! Always be there willing to serve as long as we are serving both others and God.
Mary’s heart demonstrated the characteristic of devotion. In Mark 14, she had an alabaster box of oil. During that time, the oil was a very precious thing because that was what they kept their money in instead of the banks (banks were one of the first places to be robbed during an invasion). This oil might’ve been a present to Jesus for resurrecting her brother, Lazarus, because it was probably their family heirloom and worth a lot of hard earned money. The box or flask of oil probably had a long neck and the only way to use it was to break the neck and it could not be resealed. Mary was so thankful and devoted to Jesus that she was willing to use this precious family heirloom on Jesus. She used this to wash His feet in John 12 and then she uses her hair to clean His feet. Now, in those times letting down their hair publicly as a Jewish woman was a symbol of loose morals. 1 Corinthians 11:15 states that a woman’s hair is glory to herself. The lesson to be learned from her hair is that Mary put her glory at Jesus’ feet! That is such an amazing lesson! It is also good to notice that in most of the accounts that she is in, she is always at Jesus’ feet. So, that should tell us that we need to station our hearts so close to God so that we can always be glorifying God with our lives.