On March 4, twenty women met together for Bible study, worship, fellowship and a meal. The focus of the Bible study was the story of the two sisters, Martha and Mary of Bethany. Martha was busy, very busy with preparations for the meal that they would share with their guests. She was so preoccupied with her work that she had no time to spend with her guest, the one whom God had sent to bring the Kingdom of God to her and to the rest of the world.

It would be easy to fault Martha for not sitting down to spend time with Jesus, but Martha was engaged in important work. Hospitality was very important at that time. To fail to offer hospitality was a shameful thing. When she complained to the Lord, that Mary was not helping her, Martha was told that Mary had chosen what was more important. Martha’s problem was that she let what was important pull her away from what was more important, spending time with Jesus.

Family therapists tell us that when couples do not spend time together intentionally working on their relationship, often marriages founder and sometimes fail. Relationships need to be tended. Relationships need to be nourished. Relationships take time, time which we must be intentional about setting aside.

Everyone is busy these days. In many families both husband and wife are employed outside the home. When they get home after work, there are “second shift” tasks which must be done, such as meal preparation, laundry, shopping, and cleaning. If children are added to the mix, the time required gets divided again because the children need attention and nurture and to be delivered to their sports games, music lessons, and other activities. All of this is important, and all of this takes time, and there are only so many hours in a day, and we have only so much energy. At the same time, our relationships need attention and time spent on them.

Many couples set aside time which is reserved for their relationship. It is scheduled into their week like an appointment and written into their date books in pen, not pencil. It is time devoted to catching up on what is happening with each other. It is time to care for one another, to intentionally focus on their relationship, and to enjoy being a couple. The relationship becomes a priority. This requires some juggling of schedules and it may require that we live with more dust than we are used to, but it makes us focus on what is important.

When we are baptized, we are called into relationship with God. Ultimately this is the most important relationship we have. Saint Augustine prayed, “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” We were made for relationship with God, and this relationship must also be tended. Many times we become, like Martha, so busy that we fail to spend time daily in prayer and devotion, sitting at the feet of Jesus. When this happens, the relationship becomes distant, and we feel the loss of it. When our relationship with God becomes distant our other relationships suffer as well.

We can schedule time in our day for time with our Lord who always has time for us. We can set this time aside to sit at the feet of Jesus in prayer or study. Sometimes people don’t know where to start in their devotions; there is lots of help available. We have devotional booklets available at the church to help. There are links on our website to sites which can help with prayer and devotion.

Schedule some time with God each day. Set that time aside to nourish your relationship with the one who created you and loves you with an everlasting love. It is only in our relationship with our Lord that we can find true peace and joy, and that peace and joy spills over into our other relationships and into the rest of our lives.

Vicar Patti