There's a line in the book The Silver Chair that always cracks me up. The boy Eustace Scrubb is being introduced to a very old and quite deaf dwarf, who mishears his name and subsequently says "well if he's useless then we certainly don't want him around here."
I have a strong desire to be useful here. There's not much I can do that nobody else can do. I do have responsibilities - I am in charge of the phone bill every month. That means I pay it, and I change the sheets where everybody marks down their calls, and I corroborate those with the phone bill, figuring out what everybody on the team owes.
But in Club, I'm the only new team member. On the worship team, well, it's the first time I've ever played guitar on a worship team, and I'm not that great of a player.
I like doing things like mopping or clean out glue dishes. I can tell that I'm doing a helpful thing because it's tangible, physical, and often it's something that people generally don't like to do. I have dreams in my head of myself, being really sneaky and really helpful, and doing a bunch of stuff that helps people and they don't know who did it, but it keeps happening for a long time and they figure out it was me. Oh so helpful and humble I am in my head. But aside from cleaning off the counters every once in a while, most everything is covered, in terms of being assigned. And of course I get tired and decide I don't want to sweep up the visible stuff on the floor because I just want to go home and we'll sweep it up on Tuesdays during chores anyway.
I write notes to people sometimes and stick it in their boxes, on the side so it's not very obvious but today or tomorrow or the next day they'll get it. I try to be appreciative of other people. I know that I benefit a great deal from what other people have done in the past, often times in ways that I don't see or understand.
But my worth doesn't come from what I do, how useful I am, how authentic my Spanish accent is. It doesn't matter how efficiently I sum up the phone bill or mop the floor.
In terms of a Mary/Martha dichotomy, I want to choose the best, though it's easier for me to scurry around in the kitchen than wait
and sit
and listen.
In Club, I am perfectly able of giving all my strength to learn to love these kids and show them that they are loved. And I don't play in the music band to show off but because singing changes our emotional tone and helps prepare us for for a communal expression of love, confession, and adoration to God. I want to do all that I do for the love of God, not to find my worth in how conscientious, thoughtful, hardworking, funny, etc. etc. I am. I guess it's all who you know, huh, and what he thinks of you.
I have a strong desire to be useful here. There's not much I can do that nobody else can do. I do have responsibilities - I am in charge of the phone bill every month. That means I pay it, and I change the sheets where everybody marks down their calls, and I corroborate those with the phone bill, figuring out what everybody on the team owes.
But in Club, I'm the only new team member. On the worship team, well, it's the first time I've ever played guitar on a worship team, and I'm not that great of a player.
I like doing things like mopping or clean out glue dishes. I can tell that I'm doing a helpful thing because it's tangible, physical, and often it's something that people generally don't like to do. I have dreams in my head of myself, being really sneaky and really helpful, and doing a bunch of stuff that helps people and they don't know who did it, but it keeps happening for a long time and they figure out it was me. Oh so helpful and humble I am in my head. But aside from cleaning off the counters every once in a while, most everything is covered, in terms of being assigned. And of course I get tired and decide I don't want to sweep up the visible stuff on the floor because I just want to go home and we'll sweep it up on Tuesdays during chores anyway.
I write notes to people sometimes and stick it in their boxes, on the side so it's not very obvious but today or tomorrow or the next day they'll get it. I try to be appreciative of other people. I know that I benefit a great deal from what other people have done in the past, often times in ways that I don't see or understand.
But my worth doesn't come from what I do, how useful I am, how authentic my Spanish accent is. It doesn't matter how efficiently I sum up the phone bill or mop the floor.
In terms of a Mary/Martha dichotomy, I want to choose the best, though it's easier for me to scurry around in the kitchen than wait
and sit
and listen.
In Club, I am perfectly able of giving all my strength to learn to love these kids and show them that they are loved. And I don't play in the music band to show off but because singing changes our emotional tone and helps prepare us for for a communal expression of love, confession, and adoration to God. I want to do all that I do for the love of God, not to find my worth in how conscientious, thoughtful, hardworking, funny, etc. etc. I am. I guess it's all who you know, huh, and what he thinks of you.
1 comment:
You are very thoughtful Karen. You are also do-ful though which is wonderful.
Whenever I think about Mary/Martha, I always think that on my better days I am Martha and on my worse days I am Martha lazily sitting on the kitchen floor while Jesus is in the living room, thinking about all the crap I have to get done before the sun sets and I have to bust out the oil lamps. I want to say that I am moving in the direction of being Mary, because that would make a better ending to this comment than the truth.
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