One thing you need

[This Sunday I want to talk about something that seems very simple, and that is why it is necessary, why it is good, what Mary did: to sit down at the feet of Jesus and be silent.Yes, this is a problem for believers, or at least for those who need it, who love to live a believing life. Martha, like Mary, were both believers, both loved Jesus, welcomed him into their homes, obviously into their hearts. And yet there was a big difference between their faithful lives, two different personalities. From this brief description, you can see that one of them was busy, baking, cooking, bustling about, his hands full of work, hardly able to cope with the many things to do, while the other sat quietly at Jesus' feet and listened. And when Jesus speaks of Mary's quietness as preferable to Martha's diligence, it is a necessary thing: it is not as if Jesus values idleness more than work. It does not mean that work is superfluous and that all that is important is to meditate in devotion on the things of eternity, but that there are moments, there must be times, a quarter of an hour, a half an hour, when everything, but really everything, must be put aside and quieted and nothing else done but to be with Jesus in great devotional silence. To this Jesus says that Mary chose the better part. He also praises Martha for her great effort, it is good and beautiful to be diligent and hard-working, but this is the moment when Mary does what she does right: leaving everything, she sits down at Jesus' feet and listens...I am convinced that Martha would have liked to sit there too, because she loved the Lord, but she felt that she was not available now. He has so much work to do that he can hardly manage alone, he doesn't have time to sit quietly... He has a guest, the kitchen is there, everything is in a mess, maybe there was a big laundry that day, he doesn't know what to do, he doesn't have time to sit idle... And that's where I feel Martha is so close to today's man. To the modern man. Because this is also the most frequently voiced complaint of modern man: Oh, I have no time! I don't have time! And it's not because his life is full of a lot of uselessness, because he does unnecessary things. No! Martha didn't spend her time doing useless things either, she was doing good things, everything she did was necessary... But the problem is that all this hard work takes up so much of one's time and energy that one doesn't have time for the important things in life, like family, children, friends, books... No time to give love, comfort, help to others who need it so much! The sick, the old, for example. Most people rush past the love of their spouse unnoticed. They don't see the longing of their child who is waiting for a daddy or a mummy to have time for him. He has no time to visit his elderly parent, who may be waiting for nothing so longingly as the sound of his child's approaching footsteps... But there is no time for that... I don't have time to read a book!" someone said the other day. And modern man has the least time for God. But many times I have heard a member of our congregation ask me if he or she has a quiet time at home with a Bible and prayer, and the person I asked replied: Oh, please, I don't have time for that! I would love to, I would love to, but I don't have time!
It is a strange thing, brothers and sisters, this lack of time! One of the greatest disappointments of modern man is that the time gained by the acceleration of the pace of technical means is always lost somewhere. Not that he has more time, but that he has less and less time. Imagine the unheard-of time savings of the plane, the motorbike, the car, the aeroplane, the telephone, the telegraph! A journey that used to take months can now be done in hours! Electronic calculators, typewriters, sewing machines, printing presses can do in minutes the work that used to take months for the masses. Man has surpassed the speed of sound, conquered the highest mountains, conquered space with radio and television! Work time has been halved, time has been gained everywhere! A lot of time! And where has all this time gone? Because he had no more time. Only the hurry, the noise, the nervousness... Technology has shortened time everywhere and yet man has no more time. Yet he is always complaining "I have no time! I don't have time!" - It is quite certain that if Martha had used a vacuum cleaner to clean her little home in Bethany, and had to heat the half-finished roasts on an electric stove, and had already had her coffee ground at the shop, even if she had had all the tools of modern technology at her disposal, she would not have had time to sit at Jesus' feet. Even then he would not have been able to listen in silence. Because it is a question of spirituality... Listen, the same man who complains that he has no time to be quiet before God every day because of his busy work, the same man who goes on holiday - that is, when he is not busy with work, with things to do, when he really has plenty of time - he does not have time, he does not have the time to sit down at the feet of Jesus...
One thing that every believer should learn very seriously today is what Psalm 31,16 says: "The time of my life is in your hand, Lord"! Do you know why we are so terribly pressed for time that we don't have time to live? To live intensely, usefully, seriously, in a blessed way? It is because we do not put our time in God's hands! We put it in our own hands and it drains out of our hands, it gets lost. It is wasted... This is what every believer should learn to give his time to the Lord. Just as we have often been told to put our bodies, our souls, our sin, our problems, our money into the hands of Jesus - well, so should our time! I can tell you from experience: if we could sit down at the feet of Jesus every day, as Mary did, in a really serious and quiet way, we would have much more time for everything else, for family, for wife, for rest, for books, for fun, for entertainment, for work! The time a man spends every day at the feet of Jesus is time not wasted, just as every believer knows from experience that not a tenth of his income, his money given to the Lord, is wasted!
Someone once so beautifully said that pauses in music are music in the making, music in the process of being made. The momentary waiting, the silence, only serves to make the music more beautiful than it was before! Well, such a pause in our lives is the silence we spend alone with Jesus at His feet, such a fruitful pause. It is the music of a fuller life in the making. How right Jesus is when he says "necessary"! One thing is necessary, and He points to Mary. It is necessary, it is needed, it must! Because what happens there, at the feet of Jesus, to man? Well, what happens when man meets God, is with God? What happens when my little soul comes into inner contact with the Spirit who is called God? What always happens through such a contact is that my personality is strengthened, enriched, enlightened. Divine life flows into my life, divine will into my will, divine love into my love. This is happening! Have you never fallen to your knees, broken, beaten, destroyed, and risen up renewed, strengthened, victorious?! It happens! Yes, it is there, in personal, silent communion with Jesus, that we receive the strength that helps us through difficulties, that makes our hearts better, that enables us to make our work fruitful!
But to do that, we have to sit down! How we read before, "Mary sat down at the feet of Jesus and listened to his words." Taking a break from everything else: sitting down, taking time to do it. If one passes through the forest in a hurry, one doesn't see many birds or animals. They hide. But if you sit and wait, they come out. So will you, if you sit down and open your soul to Jesus. Early in the morning, when the day begins, and late at night, when it ends, a quarter of an hour, half an hour, is needed to be quietly with Jesus, to have a conversation with him. It is necessary! Jesus said! It is necessary. Early in the morning and late at night! Between these two silences, between these two fixed points, we must capture our time, otherwise it will flow away. And then you have time for everything you need! God asks us all: what did you have time for and what didn't you have time for? Do you know what will be one of the most beautiful testimonies about us before God's judgment seat? It is when someone will be able to say of us, "I had time for me!" Take the time to regularly sit at the feet of Jesus and bathe your thoughts in His Word. Build your whole life and habits around this silence. Align your things to this, not this to your things. If you really keep it, the spirituality of it will affect your whole day. Without it, there is no Christian life!
In conclusion, let me tell you a beautiful picture I read somewhere recently. Someone in India looked at a freshly tapped gum tree with a cup to match the cut, which caught the sap from the heart of the tree. Such is prayer. We press our empty lives as cups to the wounds of the eternal God there on Calvary. And so we take life, strength, salvation from Him. Press yourself daily to His wounded side, for without it you remain empty. And let your cup be emptied daily in loving help towards others.
Of Jesus we read, "But He went away into the wilderness and prayed" - and immediately in the next verse it continues, "and the Lord had power with Him to heal" (Lk 5:16-17). He steps aside to pray - and the Lord has power with Him to heal. Therefore: necessary! This silence is indispensable, this intimate communion with Jesus, this sitting down at His feet.
What a blessing it would be for all those around us if we could be people who have time for prayer, for the Word, for intimate fellowship with Jesus, and therefore always have time for love and service to the people around us - for life! Blessed are the people who have time, for through them God is at work.
Amen!
Date: 21 July 1963.