Scripture: Ecclesiastes 4:6; Mark 6:30–32; Luke 10:38–42
A few weeks ago, we began this series by talking about lament. We discovered that faith is not pretending everything is fine—faith is bringing our questions honestly before God. Last week, we reflected on waiting: we came to realize waiting is not the same as idleness, and silence is not the same thing as absence.
This morning, we turn to another challenge. Not sorrow. Not silence. Speed. Or perhaps, more accurately, frenzy. That feeling that we can never get ahead of our work. There is always one more responsibility to meet, one more person to help, one more task to complete.
We often imagine frenzy belongs to people who are disorganized—people who never learned to say no. But frenzy shows up most often among the most faithful people. Not because they’re careless. Because they care. Love can draw us into carrying more than one life can hold.
I know I am not alone in this. Somewhere in my phone is a to-do list I made to organize my other to-do lists. And, if I’m honest, updating it can feel remarkably productive even though I haven’t actually done anything on it. We have built entire industries around helping busy people manage their busyness. If one more app, planner, or organizational system could cure frenzy, most of us would have been healed years ago.
And that is where this becomes more than a scheduling problem. The danger isn’t that faithful people stop caring. The danger is that our caring can become disconnected from our center.
Several summers ago, I was walking near a creek after a heavy rain. The water was moving fast—branches and debris rushing downstream, the surface churning. Everything about it seemed urgent. A few feet away stood an old maple, its roots disappeared deep into the bank. While the creek rushed and swirled, the tree remained. Not idle—rooted. Connected to something deeper than the current.
I have often thought that faithful living is less like the rushing water and more like that tree. Not motionless, but grounded—connected to a source deeper than the demands of the moment. And yet many of us spend our days living more like the current: rushing, reacting, filling every quiet space—and then wondering why we feel scattered, or distant from God.
In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus visits the home of Martha and Mary. Martha is busy preparing. Mary sits at Jesus’ feet. Now, I have to tell you, I have always felt a little protective of Martha. Jesus is in the house. There are guests to feed. Somebody has to find the plates. Somebody has to make the meal. And Mary is sitting in the other room. I suspect more than a few women have heard this story and thought, “Jesus, I love you, but Mary could wash a dish.” Or at least, many hands make light work, Lord. So when Martha finally grows frustrated, honestly, who can blame her? Meals do not prepare themselves.
For generations, Martha has sometimes been treated as though hospitality itself were the problem in this story. But I don’t think Jesus is criticizing Martha’s work. Listen to what he actually says: “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things.” Not busy—anxious. Not serving—scattered.
The problem is not that Martha is working. The problem is that somewhere in the work, she has lost her center. Her tasks have outrun her attention. The checklist is driving her. She is moving from one small urgency to another, and in the process she cannot receive the very presence she is working so hard to honor. She intends to serve Jesus well. She just cannot hear him over the noise of doing it.
Martha is not the villain of this story. Thank God for the Marthas. Churches would collapse by Tuesday without them. I am often a Martha myself. The problem isn’t Martha’s competence. It is that somewhere between the kitchen and the doorway, she loses the reason she is doing any of it.
That’s where many faithful people live—not unwilling to serve, just weary. Carrying more than they were meant to carry, because a quiet lie has taken root: that our worth depends on our usefulness. As long as we’re helping, as long as we’re needed, we matter. That lie can quietly attach itself to years of parenting, caregiving, church service, and simply being the person everyone knows they can count on. It may come from a culture that prizes constant engagement, or simply from wanting to be needed. Wherever it comes from, if usefulness is where our identity rests, we become frightened the moment we can’t keep up.
Scripture offers another way to be. Before we do anything for God, we belong to God. Before we serve, we are loved. Before we accomplish, we are claimed. Our worth does not begin with what we produce. It begins in the love of God. Mary, sitting at Jesus’ feet, isn’t earning anything. She’s receiving—and receiving is also part of faithfulness.
Ecclesiastes gives us a striking image: “Better is one handful with quiet than two handfuls with toil and a chasing after wind.” Picture those two hands—both clenched, both grasping, always reaching for one more thing, terrified something will be dropped. Ecclesiastes points to another way: not irresponsibility, but loosening our grip—releasing the illusion that everything depends on us. Because it doesn’t. God was at work before we arrived, and God remains faithful when we’re no longer able to do what we once did. There are things that belong to us to do, things that belong to someone else, and things that belong to God alone. Wisdom is learning the difference.
We heard it a few minutes ago in Mark’s Gospel: the disciples return from ministry, exhausted, with the work still unfinished—there are still people waiting, needs still unmet. And what does Jesus say? Not “do more.” He says, “Come away to a deserted place and rest a while.” Jesus doesn’t wait until the work is complete—because the work is never complete. Rest isn’t the reward for finishing. Rest is a necessity for people still in the middle of faithful work. We were made with limits, and limits aren’t a failure of design—they are the design. The sun sets. The seasons change. Fields lie fallow. Why do we imagine we should be different?
Let’s receive that invitation for just a moment now. “Come away… and rest a while.” Let’s sit quietly with those words. (Pause for six to eight seconds.)
One reason stillness feels hard is that activity protects us from what waits beneath the surface. When the noise fades—when the calendar clears, the phone goes quiet—we may start to hear our own hearts: our loneliness, our questions, our longing. Frenzy can become a kind of shelter from those things. But God often meets us precisely there, in the quiet places we usually rush past.
This doesn’t mean every moment becomes task-free. There will still be appointments, meals, loved ones to care for, bills to pay. The invitation isn’t to abandon life—it’s to inhabit it differently. To work from a center. To not only give, but also to receive.
So perhaps this week we practice three small things—not three more items for the to-do list, but three ways of loosening our grip.
First, notice one place where frenzy has taken hold. Where are you rushing not because the task requires speed, but because something in you is afraid to stop? Name it honestly before God.
Second, take one maple moment. For ten or fifteen minutes, refuse to rush. Sit near a window. Step onto the porch. Place your phone out of reach. You don’t have to solve anything or produce anything. Simply be present to God. You might pray with your breath: breathing in, “Root me in grace.” Breathing out, “Release my haste.”
Finally, tend one thing well. Choose one ordinary task and give it your full attention. Wash one dish. Water a plant. Listen to someone without planning your reply. Let that ordinary task become prayer.
In our Wesleyan tradition, we speak of the ordinary means of grace—prayer, Scripture, Communion, fellowship, acts of mercy. These practices don’t make God love us. They help us stay open to the love that already holds us. They keep our doing connected to our belonging.
Let’s return once more to Martha. She’s faithful. Hospitable. Competent. Jesus isn’t shaming her for caring—he’s calling her back to herself. “Martha, Martha.” Even the repetition sounds tender. He isn’t saying her work doesn’t matter. He’s saying she matters within the work. The meal may be important, but it isn’t more important than the person preparing it.
Mary simply reminds us that receiving belongs beside giving. Rest belongs beside labor. Being with Christ belongs at the center of working for Christ. Sometimes the hardest work of faith is learning to stop—not because stopping solves everything, but because stillness reminds us who we are, and who God is. We are not the Savior. We are the beloved. We are not responsible for holding the whole world together. We are held by the One who does.
So, faithful people—know when to labor, and labor with a full heart. And know when to rest, and rest without guilt. At the table of service and at the feet of Christ, may we be rooted in the One who calls us beloved.
Amen and amen.
In My Words 