My life is filled with a constant barrage of noise. When I am at home, the time is filled with voices of friends, music, or television. Rarely is there even a moment of silence. My roommates left town for almost a week, and even alone in the apartment, I managed to fill every moment with some type of noise. I don’t know how to sit in the silences. I don’t know how to “be still and know that He is God” (Ps. 46:10a).
Recently the Lord keeps bringing me to the story of Jesus in the home of Mary & Martha. I am Martha. I run frantically from job, to socializing, to job, to roles within the church, to noise-filled times of doing, doing, doing at home. I am Martha. Martha would be (and is) admired in our churches. She is on the committees, she is involved in the ministries, she is welcoming people in to her home, and she is missing what is most important. The church would admire her and strive to be like her, but Jesus says to her, ” Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better…” (Luke 10:41-42a). I am so much like her. I am constantly engrossed in the things that must be done or the things that I feel as though I must be and I miss out on what’s most important.
The Lord has been urging me to make better choices. Not to ask what is permissible, but to ask what is better. He is calling me to silence the noise, to sit at His feet, to love and be loved by Him. He is asking me to do the one thing that matters. So I am going in search of silence. I am quieting my life so that I can hear the voice of my Savior alluring me to the desert and speaking tenderly to me in that place (Hosea 2:14).
