When the serpent tempted Eve, he did so by casting doubt on the character of God. Once Adam and Eve doubted whether God was trustworthy and good, they would be willing to do anything. The rest of mankind has followed Adam and Eve into this mistrust, assuming that God does not have our best interests at heart, assuming that we can discover goodness for ourselves in some other way than the one set by God.
God kept communicating his goodness and trustworthiness to mankind, though! He sent rain and fruitfulness to the earth as a testimony of his kindness (Acts. 14:17). Creation itself is enough to prove that God is good, yet the history of humanity shows our refusal to honor him or thank him for his kindness (Rom. 1:19-21).
Even those of us who believe in our minds that he is good struggle at times to trust in our hearts his goodness. There are so many times where we try to chart our own course, rather than follow him, because we trust our own instincts for what makes life good more than we trust his word. Much of our sin springs simply from lack of faith that God will be good to us. But to people like us, people who struggled to trust the goodness of God, Jesus spoke clearly:
“And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:9-13)
The word of Jesus concerning the Father is clear. His character is better than the best of human fathers. He will be kind to his children. And Jesus’ word can be trusted, because he guaranteed it with his life itself.
So the question for us is simple—will we trust that God is good to his children? Will we lay down our own agenda and simply follow him, trusting that he will be better to us than we could ever be to ourselves?
Steven+
Scripture Reflections
The story of Martha and Mary (Sunday’s Gospel reading) needs to be read in context. While this could be said of every Bible passage, there are some that we are more inclined to mishear than others, and this is one of those!
Without context, we might think, “If no one did the work, and everyone sat at the feet of Jesus listening, the meal would never get served! Is the contemplation of Jesus really more important than serving someone in need? Does that mean theologians and preachers are closer to heaven than school teachers, nurses, and janitors?”
But this story doesn’t come by itself—it is “sandwiched” between two other stories. These three stories are best read together, rather than alone. Immediately before Martha and Mary is the Good Samaritan, where we hear the call to love with practical actions those in need. And right after Martha and Mary is Jesus’ teaching on how to pray, specifically his encouragement to pray that God would send the Holy Spirit to us. These three stories together present a rich picture of discipleship as the life of loving people with God’s love as we seek the empowerment of the Spirit through prayer.
In that context, listening to Jesus is not set in competition with acts of love, nor is it set in competition with prayer. Jesus’ response to Martha does make it clear that listening to him is the most important thing a disciple does, but it is not the only thing.
Perhaps the best way of characterizing it is that listening to Jesus is the first thing a disciple does, because it is the foundation and root of everything else. Out of listening to Jesus grows active love for our neighbors, and out of it grows a vigorous prayer life. None of these three are dispensable, but listening to Jesus needs to come first, because his words are the only sufficient foundation for a life of love and prayer. Martha’s issue was not that she served and worked, but instead that her work kept her heart from being attentive to Jesus. When we work without listening to Jesus, we end up working in a way that does nothing for the kingdom of God.
The call, then, for us, is to let our prayer and work flow from a listening and attentive heart. The more we listen, the more our prayer and work will become what God wants them to be.
Steven+
The Lord's Prayer
“When you pray, pray like this…”
The Lord’s Prayer, this prayer given by our Lord Jesus to his disciples and through them to us, can be the beginning and the end of our conversation with our Father each day. I grew up thinking my time of prayer and Scripture reading was a way to win favor with God–and man! Then for a time I gave over the practice almost entirely because pride and self-satisfaction had grown up around it, and I didn’t know how to weed them out. Later I was given, and by God’s grace took, this advice: begin and end your days with the Lord’s Prayer, as a way of beginning or beginning again to grow in this discipline of daily prayer. The words, like those of all Scripture, are as infinite as the Word who gave them to us, so that no matter how many days we have left to us we can never plumb the depths of them. And on the days when we have no words in us, when we are groping in the dark, they can be our lifeline, our Father’s hand lifting our heads that we might see our Way.
And so we pray:
Our Father, who is in heaven, hallowed by your name,
Our Father is in heaven! In vain the nations rage, our hearts turn to that which does not satisfy–Yahweh is seated on his throne, let all cry holy!
your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
In our minds, in our mouths, in our hearts.
Give us this day our daily bread.
May we never be satisfied with anything less than the Bread who came down from heaven, and may we daily feed on Him.
And forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.
Covered in your blood, from the foot of your cross we see our enemies and say with our Savior, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
Save us from the time of trial
Lift up our heads that we may see the Way you have provided out of every trial, trouble, and temptation!
and deliver us from evil.
From every evil thought, desire, and inclination of each of our hearts; and from all attacks of the evil one, the powers and principalities of this world–Father, deliver us! Fight for us, hold us that we may stand fast, encamp your heavenly armies, your horsemen and chariots around us.
For we are yours, and
Yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory for ever and ever, amen.
Rebekah