One Thing, and the Kitchen Still Full of Plates

The last plate goes on the stack and the stack goes in the cupboard and the cupboard door has that click it has had since they moved in.

Half past nine. Radio on low, the station that talks. Tea towel over his shoulder. Everything in this kitchen is where it should be, and that is not an accident, that is him, every evening, for years.

His daughter came down about twenty minutes ago and leaned on the counter and told him a long thing about somebody at work called Dev and whether she should say something. She talked for a while. He said the right things. She went back up.

And he is standing here now with his hand on the cupboard door and he cannot remember whether she is supposed to say something to Dev or not.

He was not distracted. He was not on his phone. He was fully occupied, the whole time, by the plates and the counter and what still had to be done before he could sit down, which is what he is occupied by every evening of his life, and which is why this house runs.

There is a sentence he has heard preached at people like him, and he has always found it slightly unfair. It is the one about Mary and Martha. Martha does all the work and gets told off for it, and every man who has ever kept a house going has quietly resented that story.

Friend, put the tea towel down for a minute. I want to read you what Jesus actually said, because I think the sentence you resent is not the sentence that is there.

He does not say the work was wrong

Here it is, and notice the tone before you notice anything else.

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

He says her name twice. That is not how you address somebody you are annoyed with. In Hebrew narrative the doubled name is what you say to somebody you are about to say something tender to. Abraham, Abraham. Simon, Simon.

And read the diagnosis carefully. Not you are working too hard. Not the meal does not matter. Careful and troubled about many things. The word is about being pulled in several directions at once, divided, scattered across a list. He is not describing labor. He is describing fragmentation.

You are not being criticized for keeping a house running, and the diagnosis in that sentence is about being scattered rather than being busy. That is not a lenient reading offered to make a working man feel better; Luke 10:41 names the condition precisely as careful and troubled about many things, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes a first century kitchen and stands it up in one at half past nine with the radio on low. The plates were never the accusation.

Now the second half, and it is the one that changes the evening.

One thing is needful. We hear that as an eleventh item, the important one, the one you should have got to. But the whole force of it is the opposite. He is not adding. He is naming what a person actually needs while the many things are still going on, and Mary demonstrates what it looks like: she is in one place, with one person, doing one thing.

She has not left the house. She has not resigned from the meal. She is simply, at that moment, undivided.

You have one thing available to you tonight and it does not require the plates to be finished first. The written word says one thing is needful, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an undivided moment possible in a man rather than a standard he keeps failing. Undivided does not mean unoccupied. It means all of you in one place at one time, which can happen with a tea towel over your shoulder.

Why the list feels like the safest place to be

Let me name something, carefully, because I think it is under all of this.

A list is a good place to hide. Not from other people, they can see you perfectly well, you are right there in the kitchen. From the thing that happens when you stop.

When your daughter leaned on that counter, something was being offered to you, and it was not information about Dev. It was her. And receiving a person costs more than managing a house does, because you cannot do it at the same time as anything else, and because it puts you somewhere with no task in your hands.

I am not accusing you. Most of us learned this early and learned it from somebody who loved us. But it is worth seeing, because you have been calling it service, and some of it is shelter.

You are safe to stand still without a task in your hands, and nothing is going to come at you in the gap. Psalm 32:7 says Thou art my hiding place, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a Person the shelter instead of a list, which is the swap this whole evening turns on. You do not need the plates to be safe. You have somewhere better to stand.

And here is the last piece, because you have a mouth and it does more than say the right things at a counter.

Jesus said in Matthew 17:20 that faith the size of a mustard seed, spoken to a mountain, is enough to move it. He named the smallest seed. Not the quality of your attention at the end of a long day. That a person opens their mouth and says what God has said. You have that standing because you are in Christ and Christ is in you, and speaking is the appointed way this works. We flip the switch. He sends the current.