Martha and Mary

At the Home of Martha and Mary

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked "Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her to help me!"

"Martha, Martha," the Lord answered, "You are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her."

Luke 10:38-41

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How often to we find ourselves talking in a condescending way to our elders... Some of us.. even before we eat, we bark commands like... MUMMY eat!! PAPA eat!! Under the pretense of courtesy... though seriously, they sound more like commands...

So it is that we have grown into such a generation... A generation where the young are condescending towards the old... Most of the time, all we have to do is bark a command... and out of love, our seniors and elders run to accomplish our commands... We believe we deserve all the good they have done for us.. and we act like it is our right...

A junior once said this to me,"I thought I have already told you to shut up just now? Why are you still talking? Can you stop irritating her?"

I am not condemning anyone here... I am guilty of that too... The point is... Is it any wonder that that is the exact same way we try to communicate with God? We find ourselves praying things like:

Dear Lord,

Please make me strong, successful, rich and happy...
I have prayed this prayer a dozen times...
Why have you not answered me?
Do you love me at all?
Do you even care?

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We have transplanted our attitudes towards our seniors into our attitude when talking to our Lord... And it is a wrong attitude... It is.. Because God is so much bigger and wiser than all we know... Why in the world are we commanding him and instructing him? It is weird...

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I just learned this yesterday...

I was stomping around the house screaming and shouting and feeling stressed about the job interview today... There was a problem with my Netbook and I could not assess microsoft word to get to the job application form I needed to produce the next day... To top that up, I had just received a reminder from CPF to pay up my thousand dollar debt to my dad's CPF account (for my educational funds)... that pressured me to get a job... QUICK... I felt so helpless and irritated... Thus I was shouting and screaming about the house...

To my surprise.. My pet dog Loki followed me around the house... As I ran through piles of paper looking for my transcript, screaming and complaining all that time... He was so kind and docile... not the least afraid of me... I was surprised and touched... Unconditional love... To stick with me despite the fact that I was behaving like a monster...

To my even greater surprise.. my mother who was working in the living room... did not scream at me and ask me to shut up...

You know, normally I would expect her to say things like:

"Can you please keep quiet, I need to work here... Papa needs to sleep... You are so last minute, you should have done this many nights ago..."

That would normally irritate the guts out of me.. because it does not help... but today she said:

"Come use my laptop... Send your document over, we will use my laptop to fill up the form and send it back to yours to print. Don't have to be nervous... It's just a job interview... I used to be as nervous as you too... But I am over with that phase... You got more than enough time... You will be fine..."

Wow.. I was so amazed... it was the first time in my life that I felt loved by my mum... And it was simply because I knew that I totally did not deserve her help.. I deserved to be flustered and helpless because of my bad time management.. No one ought to bail me out of it... I deserve the misery.. And yet, she wanted to help me... And more importantly, she denied her impulse of saying.. "I told you so."

That totally sealed the deal... I went to bed with new found respect for my mother and thus, new found respect for God... If my mummy can love me so much and see how helpless and needy I was despite all my yelling... how much more can God?

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I woke up this morning wanting to be a better person...