Are You Mary or Martha?

When I first moved to Westchester County, New York one of the first orders of business was finding a Church to attend.  I saw a charming little chapel not far from where I lived.  Soon my family started to attend services there.  For me, I think there is a nice dynamic in a small church.  In general, it is easier to meet and get to know people.  So, it was that I got to know the ladies of St. **********.  One day at the church's coffee hour, I heard Hugette* complain that all the same women always seemed to do all the work.  She wished more women would pitch in and roll up their sleeves to help. Being new at the church, I thought this was the perfect opportunity for me to get involved.

I introduced myself and offered to help with the upcoming,"tag sale."  I was really happy about this too.  Having run many successful tag sales at my house over the years, I thought I could be a help to my church.  I asked them what I could do to assist their efforts?  They needed several signs printed up to place on tables and tags for the different categories of items on sale.  They asked me to handle this and to arrive two evenings before the sale to sort and arrange the items for sale.

I did as they requested but was surprised to see that the signs and price tags which I had bought and printed up were not needed.  In fact, even though I arrived on time to assist in sorting and arranging items for sale, all the work had already been done.  Thinking perhaps there was a failure in communication among the ladies of the women's ministry, I tried to go with the flow.  On the first day of the tag sale, I was asked to man the vintage clothing table.

The entire day, Hugette and her mother Josephine*, second guessed and undid everything that I did.  Over time, I began to understand what this behavior was.  Hugette and Josephine constantly complained about having to do all the work, yet when someone offered to help them, they were unable to let go of control.  Do you know anyone like that?

Maybe you work with them, or you are married to them?  Perhaps you have run into them at the school Parent Teacher Association (PTA) meeting or at your church? Does this story brings to mind a parent? What Hugette and Josephine don't understand is how they have created their own personal hell.  On the one hand, they claim to be frustrated, exhausted and at their wits end. On the other hand, their perfectionistic standards are impossible to meet.  Their constant orchestration of every event is overbearing.

Some of the ladies at this church even bragged that they probably had a little O.C.D.  That seems to be a comment that I hear all the time in Westchester. While the struggles of  O.C.D.(obsessive compulsive disorder) can sometimes necessitate medical intervention, to a certain extent it can also help the individual to excel in their field of endeavor. We live in a world, where the standards are getting higher and higher.  Children are under a lot of stress trying to meet the demands of school and extra-curricular activities.  They have to be good at everything it seems.  It has been said that the teachers place pressure upon their students, in part, to advance their professional standing and that of their school.  Are we losing sight of anything?

Luke 10:38-42King James Version (KJV)

38 Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house.

39 And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus' feet, and heard his word.

40 But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me.

41 And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things:

42 But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.

As we reflect upon the story of St. ********** Church or on our own lives, these scripture verses can help us clarify a few things.  Are you a Mary or are you a Martha?  Have you experienced anger or felt overwhelmed at Christmas or Thanksgiving? Are you a perfectionistic?  Has someone ever called you controlling?  Are you like Hugette or Josephine who feels frustrated with the incompetence all around you?  If the answer to any of these questions is yes, you may be a Martha.

We see in Luke 49:40 that Martha is "cumbered with much serving."  As a woman, I know just what that means.  Martha has Jesus and His followers arriving and this requires food and hospitality.  There is a lot of work both before, during and after guests arrival that must be attended to.  However, as I read this verse, I see something more.  The work that is required is one thing, but my sense is that Martha's view of the job is undermining the situation.

How often has that happened to you?  We are often our own worst enemy.  We work ourselves into a frenzy and blow things way out of proportion.  We end up screaming at our husband, our wife or our child.  Even though the decorations and food are fine, we can't leave it alone.  We drive ourselves and eveyone around us crazy.  Why do we do that?  Doesn't fighting or being stressed out defeat the whole purpose of any event? Sometimes, we are trying to get praise for ourselves or sometimes we have families which taught us to be Martha and not Mary.

I have friends whose main memories of Christmas were negative due to the stress that the decorating and family gatherings generated in their families.  Isn't that a shame?  But there is something that we can do about it.  Going back to verse 40 in Luke's tenth chapter, we see that Martha thinks that there is only one way of looking at the situation, but there isn't.  Jesus points out another way for her and us to see things.

Martha is anxious.  She is also very angry at Mary thinking that she is not doing her part that day.  She even accuses Jesus of not caring in that verse!  I have seen many a woman believe that her husband does not care because his standards of entertaining are not what hers are.  Instead, we need to understand that Jesus, and indeed very often our husbands, care about hospitality but see the job differently than we do.  In verse 41 we see this reflected in Jesus' reply to Martha.

He understands and notes in verse 41 that Martha is a detail oriented person, and perhaps a worrier.  She attends to business beautifully but in the hyper-focus of those tasks she is missing the spiritual significance that exists in every moment of that task.  She is overdoing things and taking things well beyond where they should be.  Martha is interjecting tension and anxiety into what should be a happy time.

Going back to verse 40, we even see how desperate Martha is to control the situation.  We see her try to manipulate Jesus to get Mary to do things her way.  How sad when we resort to manipulation to achieve our goals.  Jesus directs her to a deeper more eternal truth.  What good is it to have the perfect Christmas if it is so fraught with tension that the memory forevermore is bad? Do we want more people to help at Church?  Then we must be sure that we are not discouraging people as Hugette did.  Why host Jesus at your home and not sit at His feet as Mary did? In Luke 10:42, we see that the answer for us, if we are a Martha, is to keep Jesus the focus of our world.  This changes our perception of the work that we do at church, at the office and in our home.  Let's make everything that we do today glorify God!



********* a church in Westchester, N.Y.

* the names are slightly changed.

Midlife meltdowns-Part 2

The midlife crisis is a turning point for those experiencing it.  It is important to heed the message that it gives us and decide what changes we need to make in our life.  The message often comes in the form of a harsh and painful reality, such as an adultery, a health crisis or spiritual disappointment.  Sometimes we come to learn a teenage son or daughter has been engaged in drug or alcohol use.  Whatever truth comes to light, we have a moral imperative to confront and cope with the task before us.  For many, it is their first opportunity to understand the plan that God has for their life.

Mácio* had many blessings : a wife, son, and a lovely home.  The thing that most of his energy went to however, was his business.  A graduate of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, Mácio had met and networked with many famous movers and shakers in the entertainment world. He used these connections to establish a business important in the industry.  When he arrived at midlife the consequences of the life he had lived reached their natural conclusion.  Soon the doors would be shuttered on his multi-million dollar business.  But, there is more.

Used to managing and directing the dozens of employees at his company, he wasn't equipped to accept or understand the rebellion of his teenage son.  His domineering ways were tolerated in an industry filled with "prima donna's" but home was a different story.  Mason* had his own thoughts and dreams and they were very different from those of his father.  Mácio never had time to attend the events or do the things important to his son.  Instead, he dragged Mason to entertainment events that he had no interest in.  When Mason was a youngster, he feigned interest in his father's world.  He wanted attention and his father's approval.  Now, he is just full of anger.

Psalm 16:11-You will show me the path of life; in your presence is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore." This verse from Psalms is a great starting point as you begin to unravel the knots that you have tied in your life.  In the beginning of the verse it states that, "You will show me the path."  That "You" referred to, is God Almighty. When we let God show us the path that we should be on, the tangled web we have woven for ourselves and others will begin to straighten out.  Mácio, just like a lot of us, stopped depending on God as he make decisions for his household and in business dealings.  Although Mácio attended Church, he had stopped being grateful to God for all his blessings and no longer went to God in prayer for guidance.  As a result, his life started to slip.

Denise* was in a similar situation.  While Denise had been introduced to Jesus in a Bible study at her college, it wasn't until midlife crisis that she finally accepted Jesus as her Lord and Savior.  Although she regularly attended Women's Ministry events aimed at growing her relationship with the Lord, she remained a person who was a reader of the Word and not a doer of the Word.  It was always Denise knows best.  After all, it was her wits and instinct that allowed her to survive her childhood, she thought.  She never knew her father, and her mother's disasterous marriage to another man brought Denise a first class ticket into the world of domestic abuse.  Her step-father beat her mother so badly that she almost lost an eye.  She told me that for years she would run home after school fearful that this man would have killed her mother.  I'm not sure that Denise completely trusted the Lord to protect her even now.

Denise was a warrior woman who never let her guard down.  She was always fighting.  But now in midlife, she was just another case of midlife burnout.  She had accomplished so much in her life that I get tired just thinking about it.  Born and raised in Harlem, New York, she went from a one bedroom apartment where four people lived to a beautiful home situated in one of the best school districts in Westchester County, New York.  Against all odds, she had attended medical school and now has a practice in New York City.  But everything has not been rosy for this highly accomplished woman.  She had already undergone a divorce, been the victim of crime and struggled with loneliness by the time I had met her.  Her personal relationships were troubled, and her daughter was the antithesis of what she expected her to be.  Everything, except her job, was a struggle for Denise and she was tired.

More than anything, she wanted a man in her life.  She had met several men at godly church socials yet none of them were good enough for Sister Denise.  She met and dated another doctor and he was a wonderful man, but Sister Denise thought the man was too close to his widowed mother and bluntly said so.  Then there was Dante*.  Dante was a construction worker.  He helped Denise with some home projects and lavished gifts upon her.  Everything seemed to be going smoothly until she began to feel that she was better than him because she was a physician.  When she complained to me, I told her that I thought "he was sweet and thoughtful" and she was "lucky to have met him."  I further told her that, "this could be an answer" to her prayers "to have a partner with whom she could share the household responsibilities."

Like Mácio, she refused to let the Word of God seep into all the areas of her life.  As a result, her life began to slip too.  It is hard to resist the urge to be in control rather than let our heavenly Father God be the ruler of our life.  Sometimes we only ask God's assistance after we have failed multiple times.  This was the case with Mácio when both his business and family relations began to fail.  Or, like Denise, others have let us down and so now we are afraid to trust even God.  As Psalm 16:11 states " in your (God's) presence is fullness of joy."  There is an emptiness in our life without God.  Midlife crisis is one of the loneliest times in a person's life but you are not alone.  The final part of Psalm 16:11 promises that at God's "right hand are pleasures forevermore." Healing, peace and happiness are the fruit of a a God-centric life.  God is ready to start a new chapter in your life.

* the names and a few details have been changed.

Midlife Meltdowns-Part 1

The "midlife crisis" is inevitable.  It is just one of the many transitions that we go through on the journey of life.  If we are lucky, we may have had a good role model at home teaching us how to understand and cope with the turning points in our lives.  Often we did not.  Instead we had influences in our life which created negative attitudes. We may have seen role-models buckle under the pressures of life.

John 16:1-"These things I have spoken to you, that you should not be made to stumble."

What were the attitudes of those around you during your childhood?  Ray* had a sense of entitlement and covetousness that really seemed to pay off.  To hear him tell it, he was overwhelmed with the responsibility of supporting his large family.  In his mind, that justified being a welfare cheat and using his ill-gotten gains to finance real estate investments.  He ended up quite well-off.

2 Peter 2:12-"But these, like natural brute beasts made to be caught and destroyed, speak evil of the things they do not understand, and will utterly perish in their own corruption."

Cindy* got pregnant after a one-night stand that she had on the weekend she graduated from her Bronx, New York high school.  Her family placed intense pressure on her to get an abortion.  Cindy courageously refused to do this. She amazingly soldiered on as a single mother and earned a college degree.  By the time I met Cindy, she was a teacher and mother in Westchester County, New York.  The many years of parenting her daughter alone and trying to balance that with her teaching position, had left her burned out and depressed as she reached middle age.  She was jealous of the lifestyle of her daughter Larissa's* friends.  She developed the reputation of being litigious.

Isaiah  38:20-"the Lord was ready to save me; therefore we will sing my songs with stringed instruments all the days of our life, in the house of the Lord."

Then there was Conor*. Conor was beginning to feel all of his fifty years.  He was feeling insecure seeing all the young, new talent, being hired at his company.  They were faster than him, more technologically saavy and very aggressive.  They seemed to have no respect for their elders, as he had, when he was their age.  God had blessed Conor throughout his career, but he had lost sight of that.  The only one who seemed to understand how he felt was his administrative assistant Emma*.  This lead to an affair and his eventual divorce from his wife of twenty-five years.

2 Samuel 12:7b-8-"I anointed you king over Israel, and I delivered you from the hand of Saul.  I gave you your master's house and your master's wives into your keeping, and gave you the house of Israel and Judah.  And if that had been too little, I also would have given you much more!"

Ray, Cindy and Conor had poor life skills.  The inevitable pressures of work and family caused each of them to begin sliding unto the wrong path as they reached the middle years of their life.  What is it that makes "mid-life" so treacherous? Also, what impact did this have on their children? There are a few answers that quickly come to mind.  First, they were each the product of dysfunctional homes.  They all seemed to neatly fall into a pit that each of their families had dug for them.

Ezekiel 18:4a-"Behold, all souls are Mine; the soul of the father as well as the soul of the son is Mine."

And, the sins that they committed, in response to their mid-life crises', in turn, dug a pit for each of their children.  Ray's son ended up writing bad checks when he could no longer fund the lifestyle that he and his family had grown accustomed to.  Criminal enterprises seemed to come natural to him. Cindy's daughter Larissa somehow always dated men who were emotionally unavailable to her and she's the one who is soldiering on now.  Finally, what about Conor's son Aiden*?

Matthew 15:14-"Let them alone.  They are blind leaders of the blind.  And if the blind leads the blind, both will fall into a pit."

I was invited to Conor's son wedding this May.  The beautiful bride is the daughter of a friend.  I had just received the "save the date" card in the mail when I unexpectedly received a call from my friend informing me that her daughter had called off the wedding!  Initially, I was shocked but upon reflection, I was able to connect this all back to the trauma of his father's betrayal of his family.

Aiden felt cast aside when his father took up with his assistant Emma.  Emma took all of the time and attention away from Aiden just when all the insecurities of the teenage years meant that he needed his dad the most.  Is it a coincidence that his bride-to-be cancelled the wedding when she found out that he had cheated on her?   Start connecting the dots of your own life and see if you can't make some sense of it all.  Remember, Jesus rescues us from the pitfalls of life.  We must begin to know that what we are doing is wrong and call on the Savior to pull us out of the pit.

1 John 1:9-"If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us of all unrighteousness."

Mid-life is the time when some important truths about ourselves come to light.  This is a good thing, because only when the truth comes to light can we move on to positive new directions. Some of the things that we had based our life upon have not worked out.  Ray had six children.  He had not thought or planned for this.  He wasn't one to plan and that philosophy of "don't worry be happy" had placed a hardship on his children.  What's more, work wasn't for him, his father or grandfather.  The truth hurts.

Cindy and her daughter were both super achievers professionally, but seemed to always pick men that were not there for them.  Larissa was the long-suffering girlfriend of a millionaire Muslim man from Manhattan.  She wanted so much to get married but his parents did not approve of this Jewish girl from the wrong side of the tracks. She was beautiful, smart and talented so what seemed natural about this relationship to her?  

The Bible, where God teaches us how we are to live our life, will be a source of strength as we face the erupting volcano of turmoil that comes our way during mid-life.  What is it with you? A troubled marriage? Out of control teenagers, a job that you hate or a growing financial crisis?  Take a step back and begin to look at this with perspective.  Who are you, and where are you going?  Have you tried everything you know to solve it? Do you want healing, renewal, or a new direction?  Jesus is the answer.  With our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, we can turn our life around and have a good outcome.  He is only a prayer away.

Jonah 2:2-Saying,"I called out to the Lord, out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice."





* the names have been changed but the stories are real.

Recognize a False Teacher?

Over time, many people come and go from churches.  People today church shop.  They are looking for the church with the ideal program to nuture their children. They are looking for a doctrine which they think is sound and for the proper fellowship to suit their needs.  They may or may not be looking for church programs to enrich their lives such as men's and women's ministries, support groups etc.

But lately something strange is happening which I thought I should talk about.  I am meeting more and more people who enter our church doors and have been exposed to false teachers.  Clara*, a women whom I spoke to at a church coffee, had been converted by an online Pastor whom she seemed quite devoted to.  His special interpretation of the Bible and numerological analysis of national events left me very concerned for her salvation.

There was also this couple who decided to attend a few bible studies at our church.  They seemed sweet and big-hearted.  I introduced myself to this couple after one such bible study and started to converse about their thoughtful comments.  The husband's response included a reference to a favorite Pastor of his.  He asked me if I knew ******?  I replied that I vaguely knew of the Pastor he was referring to.  He told me, "you gotta check out his you tube videos."  That evening, I was horrified to hear this Pastor intregrate "ancient alien theory" with Christianity.

These are but a few examples of what I have begun to experience on a regular basis.  There are a lot of reasons why I believe that this is a phenomenon.  The amount of information available on the internet to answer your spiritual questions is endless.  As you wade through this stuff, there are obviously going to be good and bad sources.  Many people are honestly searching for understanding or perhaps comfort when they begin their online search.  They might be lonely or vulnerable after a divorce or job lose.  Perhaps this is their first exposure to the Bible.  So, then it is quite understandable that they might be drawn to a teacher who wraps the whole thing up with a pretty bow or somehow gives them  a summary of the whole Christianity thing.

Jesus Is Central
The first clue that something is wrong usually comes when the person I am speaking to refers oftener to a pastor than to Jesus Christ.  Clara, referred to above, was so dependent upon her online Pastor, that she actually called him to get "permission" to attend our church.  Nary a mention of asking God's guidance as she endeavored to find a godly place to worship and fellowship. She could not make a move without this Pastor.  This is the anatomy of how we start slipping away from the path and begin to be mislead.  Christ is the head of the Christian church not Reverend X.
("For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ."  -
2 Corinthians 11:13 NKJV)

The Bible is the Source
The second thing that is usually a clue that someone might be following a false teacher is that they spend more time reading commentaries than the Bible.  The Bible is God's divine revelation to us and contains everything that we need to direct and guide us in all righteousness.  Of course, I am not against reading a commentary but for some people it becomes a crutch.  It is like reading the cliff notes on a book and not the actual book.  Often people blindly accept an explanation of passage that upon closer reflection makes no sense at all.  Whole denominations are mislead this way.
("All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work."-2Timothy3:16-17 NKJV)

No Special Revelation
When conducting a bible study at some one's house a few years ago, I passed a book shelf with many titles by prosperity preachers.  Perusing some of the book covers lead me to find that one female author claimed that God gave her a special message that we must all hear!  Many of these books pick a verse or two from the Bible and interpret them in a way that suits the fancy of many of the likely audience.  Never giving readers the choices or the work of following the cross.  As I passed these titles, I knew that what I would be telling that family would likely shock them.  It would be a new and deeper message, but it is the only message that saves.
("Woe unto them! For they have gone in the way of Cain, and ran greedily after the error of Balaam for reward, and perished in the gainsaying of Core."-Jude 11:11 KJV)

The Bible tells us to expect false teachers.  There has always been, and will always be, people who distort God's message.  Led by that fallen angel, the attack against us is coordinated to throw us off base as we search for God and a relationship with His Son Jesus.  As you think about living the Christian life or, if you are already a believer, you are bound to confront instances, in your own life that are false starts or wrong paths.  Don't beat yourself up about it.  Turn around as soon as possible and remember the above precepts.
("Then if anyone say to you, 'Look here is the Christ,' or 'There,' do not believe it.  For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible even the elect.  See, I have told you beforehand."-Matthew 24:23-25 NKJV)



******* the names of the false teachers are omitted.
* the name has been changed.