Martha the runner

and how I am learning to be a runner too

Photo by Carissa Weiser on Unsplash

Martha always gets a bad rap, doesn’t she? Maybe I commiserate because I am just like her. Always doing, cooking, cleaning. Always worried about whether or not there’s enough food or who needs more sweet tea. I can’t relax until I know everyone else is taken care of and has everything they want. When my kids were teens and stayed up later than I did, I could not go to sleep until I knew they were all in bed. What if one of them needed something and I wasn’t available? That’s what kept me up at night. I’m a people-pleaser from way back.

Literally every time I’ve heard the story of Mary and Martha told, Mary gets commended for sitting at Jesus’ feet, and Martha gets reprimanded for doing. Even Jesus told her in Luke 10, “Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.”

Apparently, Mary did the better thing: she listened to Jesus. But we get a different perspective in this other story of the two sisters.

In John 11 we read the story of Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, being sick. I’m sure they did all they knew how to do for him, but apparently his illness was beyond the scope of their abilities. So naturally the sisters sent for Jesus to tell him of this need.

If someone told me their brother was sick and I knew I could help, I would get there as fast as I could, but Jesus knew there was a greater purpose than just making Lazarus well. So he waited two whole days before he even started the journey. That’s a long time when your friend’s life is withering.

Finally he and his disciples headed toward Bethany where Mary, Martha, and Lazarus lived. While they were on the way, Jesus told the disciples that Lazarus was already dead, and it was good that he (Jesus) hadn’t been there, because now they would see something that would help them believe.

By the time they got close, Lazarus had been dead and in the grave for four days. That’s plenty of time for decomposition to start when there’s no formaldehyde around. Yet, knowing Lazarus was dead already, Jesus kept going. Verse 20 says:

Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met him: but Mary sat still in the house.

Same as last time, Mary was sitting. Mary stayed in the house with all the Jews who had come to mourn with the sisters. In spite of all she knew about Jesus after all the sitting at his feet and listening to him, she knew her brother was dead and her hope was gone. So she sat and mourned.

But Martha . . . Martha ran to Jesus. When she got to him, she said,

Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. But I know, that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee.

Martha held on to a glimmer of hope. She wanted to believe the story wasn’t over, and her belief was in one man, one God, the only one who could raise her brother from the dead.

So while Mary—the one who always gets commendation for sitting at Jesus’ feet—sat in the house mourning, Martha ran to Jesus. She knew her brother was dead, but she also knew Jesus could change that. She’d heard the stories of what her God could do, and she believed them and acted on her belief. Sometimes being a doer is better than being a sitter.

What a strange mental and emotional situation to be in: your brother is very dead but you still have hope? I have trouble maintaining hope while somebody is still alive, so this is fascinating to me. One time I was in a ladies’ Bible study where I shared a difficulty I was going through and asked for prayer. My friend Debbie shot her hand up and said, “I’ll run and get Jesus!” I think of her every time I read about Martha.

In the Luke 10 story, Mary sat at Jesus’ feet. Her attention was fully on him, and she gets praised in every women’s Bible study for it. But in the John 11 story, Martha is the one who is focused on Jesus and what he can do. She’d heard about all the wonderful works God had done in the Old Testament, and she believed that God was on his way to Bethany and could bring her brother back to life.

A few weeks ago I was visiting my daughters in Tennessee and went to church with one of them. I’ve been praying a long time for a specific thing that, while I know all hope is not gone, maintaining hope is sometimes hard, and, in human terms, there is a time limit on this thing. One of the songs sung that morning was “Same God” by Brandon Lake. Here are a few of the lyrics:

I'm calling on the God of Moses
The one who opened up the ocean
I need You now to do the same thing for me

You heard Your children then
You hear Your children now
You are the same God
You are the same God

You answered prayers back then
And You will answer now
You are the same God
You are the same God

What a great reminder that the God who parted the Red Sea, had a donkey speak to a wayward prophet, gave conception to a couple in their 90s, made city walls fall when a a bunch of people blew horns and shouted—that is the same God we pray to today. It’s the same God we beg for miracles today. Martha knew this.

Is he not able to do those things anymore because that was the Old Testament and we live in the New? Who decided that? He did not morph into a different being between Malachi and Matthew. He is the same God.

Why is this so hard to grasp? Why do we have so much trouble believing he is able to do big things—much bigger than we can fathom? He told us in Ephesians that he “is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think.” Exceeding abundantly. Far beyond what we can even imagine.

Does this mean we automatically get what we ask for? Not at all. But here’s the point: As trustworthy as God was back then, he is still that trustworthy today. As good as he was in Abraham’s day, he is that good today. Did his children suffer? Yes, often. Did he allow it because he always knew what was best for them? Yup. Why would it be any different today? He is the same God.

I’m afraid we (I) think of all the Old Testament stories as just that—stories. Tales we learn in Sunday school that make good flannel-graphs and coloring sheets. But do we really believe them? Do we believe ravens fed Elijah by the brook Cherith because God orchestrated them to? Do we believe one rock slung by a boy killed a giant dead? Do we really believe Jonah was in a whale’s belly for three days, got vomited out on a beach, and lived to write about it? Do we believe a donkey actually spoke understandable words to a prophet? And that God split the Red Sea down the middle and more than a million people walked across it on dry land?

Is he really the same God today, like the song says?

He is! God himself tells us in Hebrews that Jesus is “the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.”

Same God.

So here’s the question: If he could do all those things—the ravens, the giant, the whale, the donkey, the Red Sea—could he answer your prayer? Could he answer mine?

Listen, I am not preaching a “name it and claim it” gospel. But I am reminding myself to be a runner like Martha. She ran because she believed. While we should do all we can to work toward what we are asking for, we should also pray, believing that God is able. We should run to Jesus.

He is the same God.