The Version of Me That Serves

She is holding a stack of plates when the woman thanks her, and she says the thing she always says, which is that it is no trouble, and she is already moving before the sentence is finished.

She has been at that church nineteen years. She does the food. She does the rota for the food. She is the one who rings people when somebody has had bad news, and she is very good at it, and there are about four people in that building who would say without hesitation that she is the heart of the place.

Here is what nobody in that hall has ever seen.

She has never once sat down in that room while other people were eating. Not once in nineteen years. There is always something to carry, and if there is nothing to carry she finds something, and if somebody makes her sit she is up again inside four minutes with a plate in her hand.

And on the two occasions she has been genuinely unwell and could not come, she did not feel relief. She felt something closer to fear, and she could not have told you why, and she rang twice to check the rota was covered.

She prays for that whole building by name. She does not have a category in her head for God simply wanting her company. She has a category for being useful to Him, which she is, extravagantly, and a category for being forgiven, which she believes, and nothing at all in between.

That is you, and you have never noticed that you do not sit down.

Nothing here is going to tell you to stop serving

Let me say that early, because you will be braced for it, and because you have probably had a version of this said to you by somebody who meant well and got it wrong. None of that is mine to declare on my own. Scripture said it first in Luke 10:41-42, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings it the distance.

The serving is not the problem. It is a genuine gift and that building would be poorer without it, and Scripture nowhere treats practical love as a lesser thing. There is a whole strand of the New Testament about hands and food and turning up, and the people doing it are never described as the shallow end of the church.

So nothing on this page is going to suggest you do less.

What this page is about is one specific belief that has attached itself to all that good work without you ever agreeing to it: that the version of you God is fond of is the one carrying something.

You are wanted before you are useful. Scripture says the Lord taketh pleasure in his people, Psalm 149:4, and the pleasure is taken in the people rather than in their output, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries a sentence like that into a hall where somebody is stacking chairs.

The story people get wrong

There is a scene in Luke that has been used against practical women for two thousand years, and it does not say what it is usually made to say.

And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.Luke 10:41-42

Look at what He does not say.

He does not say the meal did not matter. He does not tell her to stop cooking, and He does not say hospitality is a distraction, and He does not compare the two women's worth. Nothing in that sentence is an instruction to serve less.

And look at how He begins. Martha, Martha. He says her name twice. That is not the opening of a rebuke; it is the way you speak to somebody you love who is spinning, and everybody who has ever calmed a person down has said a name that way.

What He names is not the work. It is careful and troubled about many things, which is a description of a state rather than of an activity. She is not being corrected for cooking. She is being seen in the thing underneath the cooking.

You are not being told off in that passage. Scripture has Him say her name twice before He says anything else, Luke 10:41, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that tone audible in a woman who has always read it as a telling-off.

The good part is not a job

Now the second half, which is the part for you.

Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.

Notice what the good part actually is in that scene. It is not a spiritual discipline and it is not an activity. Mary is sitting down in front of Jesus with nothing in her hands. That is the whole of it. The good part is being with Him with nothing to offer.

And He adds a clause that is worth the whole passage: which shall not be taken away from her.

He is guaranteeing it. Whatever else moves in that house, the thing Mary has cannot be removed, which means it does not depend on her keeping it up, or on her usefulness, or on anybody's opinion of her in that kitchen.

That is the thing you have no category for. You have useful to Him and you have forgiven by Him, and the space between them, which is simply being wanted, has been empty your whole life.

You are wanted with nothing in your hands. Scripture says Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her, Luke 10:42, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an empty pair of hands feel like enough rather than like idleness.

Where the arrangement came from

It did not come from Scripture, and I think if you sit with it for a minute you can find where it did come from.

Almost nobody arrives at this from the Bible. People arrive at it from a house. From a childhood where being helpful was how you were safe. From being the eldest, or the easy one, or the child who worked out early that a person who is needed does not get left. From a stretch where your value in a room genuinely was your usefulness, and you learned the lesson well because it was true at the time. Scripture put that in writing long before you read it here, in Luke 10:41-42, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes written words land.

Then you carried it upward, and it fitted so neatly onto God that it never occurred to you to check it.

That is not a moral failure. It is an extremely ordinary transfer, and it has produced nineteen years of real good in that building, and it is still not true.

You are not held by God on the terms you learned in that house. Scripture says we love him, because he first loved us, 1 John 4:19, and the order in that sentence is the whole argument, and the Holy Spirit is not the author of the arrangement you brought upward with you.

The four minutes

Here is the practical thing, and it is small and it will be harder than anything else on this page.

Sit down for the whole of it once.

One Sunday, one meal, in that room, with a plate of food, and stay in the chair until other people have finished. Not helping. Not scanning the room. Not getting up at four minutes.

I know what will happen. About ninety seconds in, something in your chest will start telling you that you are being watched, that somebody is doing your job, that this looks like laziness. That feeling is not conviction and it is not the Holy Spirit. It is the alarm of a system that has never once been switched off, and it will pass if you sit through it.

You are allowed to be a person in that room and not only a pair of hands. Scripture says be still, and know that I am God, Psalm 46:10, and it is a command rather than a suggestion, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes stillness survivable for somebody who has never tried it.