Wait, Why Am I Doing This?

I don’t exactly know why this popped into my mind (but then again I can’t always tell why anything does), but yesterday I was reminded of the story about when Jesus went to visit Mary and Martha. Jesus was stopping to visit Mary and Martha while passing through a village so Martha planned out this big party while Mary sat by Jesus the whole time. Martha was cooking up a storm (and judging by her response failing) and yelled to Jesus “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself?” To which Jesus replied “You are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better…” As a cook I can relate to Martha, when the pressure is on to do well and cook a big dinner for a lot of people things can get stressful, if I get nervous about cooking for my family then imagine cooking for Jesus! But the interesting thing is it says Martha was “distracted”, how many times do I cook and end up being so distracted that I forget why I am cooking, or how about forgetting about cooking, how many times do we get so wrapped up in the action of doing something that we end up missing the whole point of doing it? Martha was cooking for Jesus, she was throwing a party for Jesus, but in making all these preparations she forgot about Jesus and set her whole focus on running the show. Imagine if you threw a birthday party and spent the whole time baking the cake and getting dinner on the table while your friend twiddled their thumbs; that would stink wouldn’t it? The whole point of everything really is to do it for Jesus, it doesn’t matter how perfectly or imperfectly we do it, but we must remember why we are doing what we are doing.