Cumbered About Much Serving

It happens most reliably at about twenty past seven, standing at the sink with his back to the room.

Everybody else is still at the table. They are talking. Somebody is laughing about something and it is a good sound and he can hear his daughter doing the voice she does.

And he is at the sink, and there is a thing in his chest that he has stopped being surprised by, and if you put words on it the words would be: not one of you has moved.

Then, within about four seconds, the second thing arrives, which is worse. Because he loves them. Because his daughter is fifteen and will be gone in three years and he knows exactly what he will give to have a Tuesday like this back. Because his wife works harder than he does and everybody in that room knows it.

So he is a man standing at a sink being quietly furious at people he adores, and then being disgusted with himself for it, and the second layer is heavier than the first by a considerable margin.

He has never told anybody. There is no way to say it that does not sound like an accusation of the people at the table.

If you are at a sink tonight, come and sit down. Nothing you feel is going to be judged in here.

She said it out loud, and to His face, and to the wrong person

Here is a sentence in the Gospels that is more useful than most of what has been preached off the passage it sits in.

But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him, and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me.Luke 10:40

Read what she actually does.

She is in a kitchen. She is doing real work for a house full of guests, and she is on her own, and there is a woman sitting on the floor in the next room, and Martha comes out and says it.

And notice who she says it to. Not her sister. She goes past Mary entirely and complains to Jesus, and the form of the complaint is an accusation of Him: dost thou not care.

That is not a gentle request for assistance. That is a woman at the end of a long evening telling God to His face that He does not care, in front of company.

And He does not throw her out. He does not rebuke her for the tone, He does not tell her she has no right to feel it, and He most certainly does not tell her she should be ashamed of resenting her own sister.

He says her name twice, which is what you do to somebody you are being tender with, and then He tells her the truth about what is happening in her.

You are permitted to say it exactly as it is in you, and the permission was already demonstrated in that kitchen. Luke 10:40 is where that sits, in a complaint that was allowed to be made out loud without anybody being cast out, and the same Spirit who moved Luke to keep her actual wording is the one who lets a man at a sink stop hiding.

The shame is the load, not the resentment

Now the part that matters most, and it is about which of the two things to deal with first.

The resentment is ordinary. It is what a tired body produces at twenty past seven when it is working and other bodies are not, and it says nothing whatsoever about whether he loves those people. Bodies are not diplomats. They report load, and they report it in the only language they have.

The shame is a different thing entirely, and it is the reason he has never said any of this out loud, and it is doing all the damage.

Because shame is what makes it unspeakable. A man who was merely tired and irritated would grumble about it and it would be over. A man who believes the irritation makes him a bad father cannot mention it to anybody, and so it stays in him and goes round, and it comes back every evening slightly stronger because nothing has ever been done with it.

Martha did not have the second layer. That is worth noticing. She was furious and she said so and it went out of her in about eleven words, and she was still standing there afterward with Jesus talking gently to her.

You are already able to say it and remain, and it was already safe before you tried. He promised it, in the invitation to cast all your care on Him because He cares for you, which is a sentence about the ugly ones as much as any other (1 Peter 5:7), and His Spirit does not flinch at what a tired man is actually thinking.

The paragraph that outranks the teaching

Before we go on, this outranks everything above it.

Some people must not go without food. If you live with diabetes, if you are pregnant or nursing, if you take medication, if you have ever had a hard relationship with food or with eating, if you are underweight, unwell, frail or elderly, or if you are simply not sure, speak to your doctor before you go without anything and let their answer be the answer. There is no length on this page, no kind of fast, no plan and no schedule, and there is not going to be one here.

And nothing on this page asks anything of the people at that table. Nobody has to change, nobody has to be told, nothing here should make an evening harder for your wife or your daughter. A practice that costs the household is the wrong practice, and there is nothing admirable anywhere on this site about a person quietly going without for everybody else.

Privacy is about audience and never about hiding, too. Telling your doctor is right. Telling your wife is right. Telling whoever cooks in your house is right and it is basic courtesy. None of it fails anything.

You are fully inside this, and you were never at the edge of it because of what your body allows. Scripture settled that long before you got here (2 Corinthians 8:12), and the Spirit of God is not distributed by how much anybody manages.

If today is heavier than a page can hold, call somebody real: your doctor, a counselor, or a crisis line, and the emergency services if you or anybody near you is in danger tonight.