The One Thing Jesus Said You Can’t Afford to Miss

A teaching post for women who love God and are tired all the way to the bone

“Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” — Luke 10:41–42 (NIV)

There is a moment in this story that I think most of us skip right over.

We know the scene. Jesus comes to Bethany. Martha throws open her home and gets to work—because someone has to, because the meal won’t make itself, because that is what love looks like when you’re the one holding it all together. And Mary sits down at Jesus’ feet and simply listens.

We know how it’s usually told. Martha is the cautionary tale. Mary is the hero. And most of us, if we’re honest, read it and feel a small, familiar sting of guilt—because we know exactly which sister we are.

But I don’t want you to rush to the guilt. I want you to slow down and hear what Jesus actually said. Because when He answered Martha, He didn’t scold her service. He named her condition. You are worried and upset about many things. And then He said something so quiet and so enormous that we can miss it entirely: few things are needed—or indeed only one.

One thing.

Not everything on your list. Not the whole overwhelming pile of the good and the urgent and the genuinely important. One thing. And Jesus said Mary had found it.

Jesus Was Not Correcting Her Work

Let me say this plainly, because I think a lot of faithful, hardworking women have carried the wrong wound out of this passage for years.

Jesus was not rebuking Martha for serving.

Look closely at His words. He doesn’t say, “Martha, you shouldn’t be cooking.” He doesn’t say the meal doesn’t matter or that hospitality is beneath the spiritual life. The very next chapter of Luke, He’ll teach His disciples to ask, seek, and knock—He is not against effort or action. Service is not the problem. The Good Samaritan, whom Jesus praised just a few verses earlier, served.

The word Luke uses for Martha is distracted. She was pulled in every direction. And the words Jesus chose—worried and upset—describe her heart, not her hands. He was not looking at her casserole. He was looking at her anxiety.

That distinction changes everything. Because if the lesson of this story were “stop working,” most of us couldn’t obey it if we tried. You have people who depend on you. You have a home, a ministry, a family, a job, a hundred quiet responsibilities that don’t disappear because you’d like a quiet morning with Jesus. The problem was never the doing.

The problem was that somewhere in all the doing, Martha lost the One she was doing it for.

“Martha, Martha” Is the Sound of Compassion

Here is something I want you to hear in Jesus’ voice, because I think we’ve been hearing it wrong.

When Jesus says her name twice—Martha, Martha—that is not the tone of a frustrated guest. In Scripture, when the Lord says a name twice, it is tender. Abraham, Abraham. Simon, Simon. It is the voice of someone who sees you completely and loves you anyway. It is the voice you’d use to gently stop someone you adore from running herself into the ground.

I’ve held that voice in my own life. I remember comforting my six-year-old grandson when he was worked up over something that felt like the whole world to him, wrapping him up and saying his name softly until his breathing slowed. And I remember, on the other end of things entirely, the almost unbearable weight of sitting with my father and telling him he was dying—and how in that moment I understood something about the compassion of God I couldn’t have learned any other way.

That is the tone of Martha, Martha. It is not, “You’re doing it wrong.” It is, “Come here. Put it down for a minute. I have something better for you than another finished task.”

Jesus wasn’t disappointed in Martha. He was inviting her.

The Danger Isn’t Doing—It’s Drifting

So if service isn’t the enemy, what is Jesus warning her about?

Drift.

There’s a passage in Revelation that reads like the risen Christ writing Martha a letter years later. To the church in Ephesus He says: “I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance… Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first” (Revelation 2:2–4).

Read that again slowly. He commends their hard work. He praises their perseverance. These were not lazy people. And still—you have forsaken the love you had at first. You can keep every plate spinning, keep serving, keep showing up, keep doing all the right and holy things, and quietly, without ever deciding to, lose the very love that started you doing them.

That is the danger Jesus saw in Martha’s kitchen. Not that she would stop working. That she would keep working long after she’d stopped worshiping—and never notice the difference until the joy was gone.

This is the thing about drift: it is never a decision. No one chooses to grow distant from God. You don’t wake up and resolve to love Him less. You just get busy. The “many things” pile up—all of them legitimate, most of them good—and they crowd the room until there’s no chair left for the one thing.

And here is the part I most need you to hear: the many things will multiply. They always do. If you are waiting for your life to get quiet enough to seek God, you will wait forever, because the tasks are not going to volunteer to shrink. There will always be one more thing. The only way to protect the one thing is to choose it on purpose, while the many things are still clamoring.

Seek First—Everything Else Finds Its Place

So how do we choose it?

Jesus gave us the answer somewhere else in His teaching: “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well” (Matthew 6:33).

First. Not eventually. Not after the list is done—because the list is never done. First. There is a beautiful order hidden in that word. Jesus isn’t asking you to abandon “all these things.” He’s promising that when you put Him first, the rest of it falls into a place it can never find as long as it’s sitting in the driver’s seat.

This is not a productivity strategy. It’s a reordering of loves. Martha wasn’t wrong to want the meal to be good. She was wrong to let the meal become more urgent than the Messiah sitting in her living room. Mary understood something her sister missed in the rush: Jesus would not be in that house forever. The dishes would keep. He would not. And so she chose the thing that could not be taken away.

There’s a law in physics—an object in motion stays in motion unless something interrupts it. That’s most of our lives. We are in motion, and the motion feeds itself, and nothing slows down on its own. Sitting at His feet is the interruption. It is the deliberate stop that breaks the momentum long enough for God to fill you back up.

Because you cannot pour out of an empty vessel. You know this. You’ve felt the difference between serving from overflow and serving from fumes. Mary’s stillness was not the opposite of Martha’s service—it was the fuel for it. Sit first. Then serve. In that order, and only in that order, the service stays soft and the love stays alive.

Find Your Nest

Let me get practical, because “seek God first” can sound lovely and still leave you standing in your kitchen Monday morning with no idea where to begin.

When I was in college, overwhelmed and striving and trying so hard to be enough, I sensed the Lord say something to me I’ve never forgotten. Not a lecture. Just, essentially—shh. Stop performing. Stop producing. Come and simply seek Me. I found a place that became my nest—a spot where I could go and be still and be refilled.

You need a nest. A dedicated place and a dedicated time where you meet with God before the many things get their hands on your day. It does not have to be elegant. I know a woman whose nest is a chair in the corner of her bedroom. I know another—a pastor—who sits in a parking lot for thirty minutes before work because it’s the only place quiet enough to hear God over the noise of the house. For some women it’s the car in the school pickup line. For some it’s music; there are women I love whose deepest worship happens with a song playing while they rock a grandbaby to sleep. The place is not the point. The consistency is the point.

So here is a challenge, the same one I gave the women walking through this study with me: for the next seven days, find your nest. One place. One regular time. Go there and be still before God before you do anything else. Don’t measure it by how it feels or whether you “got something out of it.” Just show up, the way you’d show up for someone you love. That is how the one thing gets chosen—not in a single grand decision, but in a hundred small returns.

Because that’s the last thing to say about this: seeking Him first is not something you settle once. Martha didn’t fail because she never sat at Jesus’ feet. She failed, that day, to keep choosing it. Surrender isn’t a one-time event; it’s a daily return. You will drift. You’ll get busy again. And every single morning, the invitation stands wide open: few things are needed—or indeed only one.

Choose the one thing today. Then choose it again tomorrow.

It is the one thing that will never be taken away from you.

For Reflection

1. When life overwhelms you, be honest: do you instinctively draw near to God, or do you drift away from Him into busyness? What does that pattern reveal about where you turn for refuge?
2. What are the “many things” pulling on your heart in this season? Which of them are genuinely good—and how have the good things quietly crowded out the one thing?
3. Where is your “nest”—the place you meet with God? If you don’t have one, what is one specific place and time you could commit to for the next seven days?

This post is drawn from the At His Feet, In His Service series—a Mary and Martha journey into rest and mission for women who love God and are weary of running on empty. If your heart stirred at “Martha, Martha,” the companion book and study guide will walk you, week by week, into the stillness that fuels a lifetime of service. Learn more at https://juliehirschauer.com.