Mary and Martha

December or Christmas season is known to be the busiest month for retailers, churches and families. The 'buzz' of activities in December is just non-stop. Extended trading hours: working on Sundays and late nights; buying pressies for: colleagues, secret santa activities, friends, family, kids, mum, dad, church people; carol singing and lots of other xmas activities; plus other normal celebrations such as birthday parties, dinner invitations and weddings, the list just goes on.

If I'm not at work, I'm either at church, or at carol singing, or someone's birthday party, or doing xmas shopping. Busy busy busy! That's the theme of the month. Every single one of my day off in December is packed with a list of things to do or to attend.

In Luke 10:38-42, there's a story about Mary and Martha, two sisters who invited Jesus to come to their house for tea. Common sense tells you that if you invite somone over for tea, there's a lot of work to be done: preparing food, drinks, plates, cutleries, cleaning the house, and many more. In this particular story, Martha did what common sense told her, but she found her sister, Mary, sitting near Jesus, enjoying his company. Being normal, she then complained to Jesus asking him to tell her sister, Mary, to help out. To her surprise, Jesus pretty much said that Mary chose the right thing! While Martha was busy with the things that she thought was important, Mary chose to enjoy Jesus' company.

I feel a bit like Martha nowadays. With so many things happening around me, it is just so hard to find some peace and quiet. Tonight was a good example: because it is school holiday, we've allowed Naomi to sleep later than her normal bedtime. Plus with so many evening activities, such as carol singing, dinner invites, etc, it hasn't been easy getting her to sleep early. Today she went out and about with my parents because I was at work. After work, I took her to a friend's birthday party. We got home at about 8.30 pm and straight away she had her shower, bedtime reading, and then it's bedtime for her. I thought it was going to be easy for her to fall asleep since she was probably tired from all those playing at our friend's house. I was really looking forward to my peaceful night where I can just have my quiet time to read and to blog. Something that I haven't been able to do for a while due to various activities. But guess what?.... It took her a good 20-30 minutes to actually fall asleep! As usual, she started by lining up her dora toy, then her baby doll, and her white teddy bear called 'Tyler', all next to her. She put the blankie over them and she'd have some sort of bedtime conversation with them. She then toss and turn besides me and told me that she couldnt sleep. So I had to put everything away, and help her to fall asleep by softly scratching her back (I swear she's so addicted to this). After about 10 mins, she's finally asleep (phew...).

As a working mum, it is so easy to be so task oriented. It's always do this, do that, do this, do that. Like Martha, I just keep going and occupy my mind with a 'to do' list, almost all the time.

Today I am reminded that as much as it is good to serve others, serve our families, our friends, our church, and the community, there is one very important thing that we can't forget, and that's keeping our relationship with God. Afterall, Christmas is suppose to be all about Jesus. Why have we been busy with others and everyone else but Him?

There are 5 more days till Christmas.... who do you choose to be: Mary or Martha?