# Choose Better *but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”* By [Reborn Jem](https://paragraph.com/@rebornjem) · 2026-05-23 faith, christianity, jesus, biblestudy, devotional, spiritualgrowth, christianliving, meditation, luke10, walkwithgod, graceandtruth, sitathisfeet, theodoichua --- **Luke 10:38-41 (NIV)** ----------------------- _38 As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. 39 She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. 40 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 the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”_ _41 “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, 42 but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”_ * * * ### She Opened Her Home The passage begins with an act of genuine generosity. Martha opened her home to Jesus. This is not a small thing. Jesus is travelling with His disciples — a group of people who need feeding and hosting and space. Martha sees Him coming and opens the door. The hospitality is real. The love behind it is real. Whatever happens next in the story, it begins here — with a woman who welcomed Jesus in. This matters because it prevents the easy reading of Martha as a villain. She is not a person who missed the point because she was indifferent to Jesus. She is a person who missed the point while trying to honour Him. The distraction that overtakes her is not laziness or selfishness — it is the distraction of someone who has taken on a great deal of genuine work in service of a guest she genuinely loves. This is why the passage is more uncomfortable than it first appears. It would be easier if Martha were simply neglecting Jesus in favour of trivial things. But she is neglecting Jesus in favour of serving Jesus. The problem is not the motivation. It is what the motivation has produced — a distracted, worried, resentful woman who has lost sight of the very person she is working so hard to honour. * * * ### Mary at the Feet Mary sits at the Lord’s feet listening to what He said. In the culture of first-century Judaism, sitting at the feet of a teacher was the posture of a disciple. It was what students did — male students. A woman taking that position was itself quietly countercultural. Mary is not just choosing rest over work. She is claiming the posture of a learner, of someone who believes that what comes from the mouth of this teacher is worth everything else being set aside to receive. Luke does not tell us what Jesus was saying. The content is left unspecified because it is not the point. The point is the posture. Mary has positioned herself to receive. She is not contributing to the meal preparation. She is not managing logistics. She is not doing anything that the occasion, by conventional expectation, requires of her. She is simply there, at His feet, listening. And she stays there. Even as Martha’s preparations multiply and the frustration builds in the kitchen, Mary does not move. She is not unaware that there is work to be done — she is choosing, with full knowledge of the alternative, to remain where she is. * * * ### Distracted by All the Preparations The word Luke uses for Martha’s state is periespato — pulled away, dragged in different directions. It is the word for someone whose attention has been captured and scattered by the demands of the surrounding environment. Martha is not distracted in the sense of daydreaming. She is distracted in the sense of being consumed — pulled here and there by the accumulating demands of hospitality until the person she is doing it all for has become peripheral to the activity done in His honour. This is one of the quietest and most persistent dangers in the life of faith. The work of serving God gradually displacing the presence of God. The activity done for Jesus crowding out the time spent with Jesus. The preparations multiplying until the guest is somewhere in the background of a house full of preparations made in His name. It happens without a decision. No one chooses to let the work become the thing. It accumulates. One task leads to another. The standards of hospitality require this and then that and then the other thing. And at some point — without it ever being the intention — Martha is no longer hosting Jesus. She is managing an event, and Jesus is the occasion for it rather than the centre of it. * * * ### Lord, Don’t You Care? The frustration that has been building comes out in the form of a complaint directed at Jesus rather than at Mary. _Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me._ The question reveals exactly where Martha has arrived. She is appealing to Jesus to adjudicate a domestic dispute. She is asking Him to intervene in the logistics of meal preparation. The Son of God, sitting in her home with something to say that Mary has recognised as worth sitting at His feet to receive — Martha wants Him to redirect Mary back to the kitchen. There is an accusation underneath the appeal. _Don’t you care._ The distraction has progressed far enough that Martha is now framing Jesus as part of the problem — sitting there while she does all the work, apparently unbothered by the inequality of the situation. The resentment that has built up in the kitchen is now being directed at the guest. This is where worry and upset tend to land. Not on the actual problem — the many things — but on the people who are not sharing the burden of the many things. The person who is distracted by preparations does not usually just feel busy. They feel alone in the busyness. And the loneliness of it eventually produces the question Martha asks — does anyone see what I am doing here? Does anyone care? * * * ### Martha, Martha The repetition of her name is everything. Jesus does not answer her question. He does not adjudicate the dispute. He does not tell Mary to get up and help or tell Martha that her work is unappreciated. He speaks her name twice — and in the repetition there is something that is impossible to fully capture in words. Tenderness. Attentiveness. The specific, personal address of someone who sees exactly where she is and is not dismissing it. He knows her name. He says it twice. Whatever comes next is not the judgment of a distant authority but the word of someone who is present to her — the very presence she has been so busy that she has missed. _You are worried and upset about many things._ He names what is happening inside her before He addresses what is happening around her. The problem is not the preparations. The problem is the worried and upset — the internal state that the preparations have produced. The many things are real. But what they have done to Martha — the anxiety, the resentment, the sense of being alone and uncared for — that is the thing Jesus is actually addressing. * * * ### Few Things Are Needed — Indeed Only One _Few things are needed — or indeed only one._ The statement moves from few to one in the space of a single sentence. It is a compression that captures something important. The many things Martha has taken on are not all equally necessary. Strip away everything that is not essential and you arrive eventually at one thing. The one thing that the meal is supposed to be in service of. The one thing Mary has chosen. The presence of Jesus. The meal was meant to be a way of honouring that presence. The preparations were meant to create the conditions for it. But somewhere between the intention and the execution, the means became the end. The table preparations replaced the one who was supposed to sit at the table. The service of Jesus displaced the sitting at His feet. Mary has not failed to serve. She has correctly identified what serving actually requires in this moment. When Jesus is in the room, the most important thing is to receive what He is giving. Everything else — however genuinely important at other times — is secondary to that. The food can wait. The logistics can wait. The one thing that cannot be deferred is presence with the one who is present. * * * ### It Will Not Be Taken Away From Her The final line of Jesus’ response is a promise as much as a defence of Mary. _Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her._ The choice Mary has made — to sit at His feet, to listen, to receive — is a choice whose fruit is permanent. What is absorbed in genuine attentiveness to Jesus cannot be lost. The word heard, the presence received, the formation that happens in a person who positions themselves to be with Him — these are not perishable in the way that a meal is perishable. The food Martha is preparing will be eaten and gone. What Mary is receiving will remain. This is not a general principle that sitting is always better than serving. Jesus does not abolish the importance of hospitality or the value of practical service. The passage is not the founding text of a spirituality that dismisses the Martha-work as unimportant. It is a statement about priority in a specific moment — when Jesus is in the house, the first thing is to be with Him. Everything else is ordered rightly when that first thing is in its proper place. The warning to Martha is not that she should stop serving. It is that she has allowed the serving to pull her away from the source that makes the serving meaningful. The activity done for Jesus cannot be sustained well by a person who has stopped spending time with Jesus. The preparations that honour His presence eventually require the presence they are meant to honour — or they become hollow. * * * ### Walk On Most of us know both sisters from the inside. We know what it is to sit at His feet — to have seasons of genuine attentiveness, of prayer and Scripture and the quiet receiving of what God is giving. And we know what it is to get up from that place and find the many things gradually pulling us away until, without any single decision to move, we are in the kitchen managing preparations and the one we started out serving has become the occasion for our activity rather than the centre of it. The question this passage leaves is not whether you are busy. You probably are. The question is where the busyness has positioned you in relation to Jesus. Whether the work done in His name is still connected to the presence that gives the work its meaning. Whether there is still, underneath the preparations, the posture of someone sitting at His feet. Few things are needed. Indeed only one. Make sure that one is not the thing the preparations have crowded out. All glory to God — forever and ever. Amen. 🤍 * * * _If this reflection spoke to you, consider subscribing to follow along my journey of faith, meditation, and rebuilding — one day at a time. Your support truly means more than you know._ ❤ --- *Originally published on [Reborn Jem](https://paragraph.com/@rebornjem/choose-better)*