Show Notes for Episode 16 of Teach Me to Walk in the Light Podcast. Learn 3 valuable lessons from Mary and Martha: 1) Minister to the one 2) Prioritize your life 3) Not judging others. Includes Teaching Tip from Tim Allen of Last Man Standing and a fun, competitive game for the whole family! This episode goes along with the Come, Follow Me – for Individuals and Families for the week of April 22-28, 2019.
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**This Episode goes along with the Come, Follow Me – For Individuals and Families for the week of April 22-28, 2019.
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PERSONAL STUDY
1.The story of Mother Theresa, Click HERE
2. Hank Smith once said:
“So many people around us are suffering in silence. You’d be shocked to know who is hiding emotional and physical pain behind a smile. An act of service, a single compliment, or one deep conversation can lift their despair and change everything.”
3. Back then, in Mary and Marth’s time, hospitality was very important in Jewish society, and a woman’s honor and reputation depended partly on how well she fulfilled her role of hostess. Because of these social customs, Martha’s complaint that her sister, Mary, had left her to serve alone (see Luke 10:40) would have been seen as justified by many people of that time. But the Savior’s response to Martha was, “Mary hath chosen that good part” (Luke 10:42). One of the things that response clarifies is that there are higher priorities than social customs, even if they are good customs.
4. President Boyd K. Packer has said: “We need women with the gift of discernment who can view the trends in the world and detect those that, however popular, are shallow” (Ensign, Nov. 1978, 8)
5. President Dallin H. Oaks said:
“Just because something is good is not a sufficient reason for doing it. The number of good things we can do far exceeds the time available to accomplish them. Some things are better than good, and these are the things that should command priority attention in our lives.
Jesus taught this principle in the home of Martha. … It was praiseworthy for Martha to be ‘careful and troubled about many things’ (v. 41), but learning the gospel from the Master Teacher was more ‘needful.’”
6. Our lives are so busy and so overwhelming with lots of things that we tend to dub as “have to’s” I have to do this, I have to do that. But do you really? Do you have to? In everything we do, we have a choice. We choose the things that we do. We don’t “have” to do anything. We don’t have to do the laundry but perhaps we choose to so that we can wear clean clothes. We like the feel of clean clothes compared to dirty ones. Sometimes just that switch in the way we look at things can help us to not feel so overwhelmed.
When I am feeling particularly overwhelmed, I do what I call a brain dump. I write everything out on a piece of paper that occupies my time. Then one by one, I prioritize which ones are most important and which ones I can get rid of.
If you are feeling overwhelmed, I encourage you to do it too. It’s so freeing when I am able to look at my life and choose the things that I feel are a priority and which things I can take out. There are some things that I don’t necessarily take completely out, sometimes I’m able to just cut down the time I spend on them or find a simpler way of doing it. There are some things I struggle with taking out, even though I know it’s taking up a lot of my time and it’s not really a priority. So in that case, I will take it and put it aside and tell myself I’ll come back to that in 6 months or next year.
As we each choose what our priorities will be, let us remember that everyone else gets to choose what their priorities will be too and we should not judge them by what they choose.
7. Another lesson we can learn from the story of Mary and Martha is how in Martha’s request for assistance you can almost hear the unspoken but clear judgment of “I am right; she is wrong.”
8. In a talk entitled Choosing Charity: That Good Part by Bonnie D. Parkin, she said:
“Do we judge one another? Do we criticize each other for individual choices, thinking we know better, when in fact we rarely understand another’s unique circumstance or individual inspiration? Have we ever said, ‘She works outside the home.’ Or, ‘Her son didn’t serve a mission.’ Or, ‘She’s too old for a calling.’ Or, ‘She can’t—she’s single.’ Such judgments, and so many others like them, rob us of the good part, that pure love of Christ.”
9. Let’s also not forget the part where we tend to judge ourselves by comparing ourselves to others. She dresses so much cuter than me, her children are more talented, her house is so much better than mine. We can’t do that either. We can’t allow ourselves to feel inadequate by playing the comparison game. It accomplishes nothing.
Choosing that good part includes not judging, not criticizing, not gossiping – we just can’t. That diminishes the pure love of Christ within us.
10. Elder Marvin J. Ashton once said:
“Perhaps the greatest charity comes when we are kind to each other, when we don’t judge or categorize someone else, when we simply give each other the benefit of the doubt or remain quiet. Charity is accepting someone’s differences, weaknesses, and shortcomings; having patience with someone who has let us down; or resisting the impulse to become offended when someone doesn’t handle something the way we might have hoped. Charity is refusing to take advantage of another’s weakness and being willing to forgive someone who has hurt us. Charity is expecting the best of each other.” [“The Tongue Can Be a Sharp Sword,” Ensign, May 1992, 19.]
11. Elder Gregory A. Schwitzer of the Seventy once said:
“Many Sunday lessons have been taught using this story which have cast Martha in a lesser position in terms of her faith. Yet there is another story of this great woman, Martha, which gives us a deeper view of her understanding and testimony. It happened when the Savior arrived to raise her brother, Lazarus, from the dead. On this occasion it was Martha whom we find going to Jesus “as soon as she heard” He was coming. As she meets Him, she says that she knows that “whatsoever [He would] ask of God, God [would] give [Him].”
Christ then shared with Martha the great doctrine of the resurrection [and asked,] “Believest thou this?”
She responded with her powerful testimony: “Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.”
How often has Martha been misjudged as being a person who cared more for the deeds of doing than for the Spirit? However, her testimony in the trial of her brother’s death clearly shows the depth of her understanding and faith.
Many a sister has often heard the first story and wondered if she were a Mary or a Martha, yet the truth lies in knowing the whole person and in using good judgment. By knowing more about Martha, we find she was actually a person of deep spiritual character who had a bold and daring testimony of the Savior’s mission and His divine power over life. A misjudgment of Martha may have caused us not to know the true nature of this wonderful woman.”
FHE [15:58]
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TEACHING TIP [19:00]
1.Words of Tim Allen from TV sitcom Last Man Standing:
“If nobody’s talking then nobody’s listening and if nobody’s listening then nobody’s learning
…Within our country and within our families not communicating seems to be the weapon of choice right now. We unfriend, unlike, and unfollow instead of trying to understand each other.”
2. President Thomas S. Monson said:
“Never let a problem to be solved become more important than a person to be loved.”
#taketimeforfamily [20:30]
Don’t forget to take some pictures and use the #taketimeforfamily and post them on your favorite social media site. Let’s show the world how important it is that we take time for those who matter the most to us.
If you have any fun family activities or dinner conversation starters that you’d like to share, I’d love to hear them. Simply email me at melanie@melanieslibrary.com.
Yours Truly,
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