Luke 10:38-42 Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village… I. THE TRIAL OF NON-APPRECIATION. This is what made Martha so mad with Mary. The younger sister had no estimate of her older sister's fatigues. As now, men bothered with the anxieties of the store, and office, and shop, or coming from the stock exchange, they say when they get home: "Oh, you ought to be over in Wall-street in these days; you ought to be in our factory a little while; you ought to have to manage eight, or ten, or twenty subordinates, and then you would know what trouble and anxiety are." Oh, sir! the wife and the mother has to conduct at the Same time a university, a clothing establishment, a restaurant, a laundry, a library, while she is health officer, police, and president of her realm! She must do a thousand things, and do them well, in order to keep things going smoothly; and so her brain and her nerves are taxed to the utmost. If, under all this wear and tear of life, Martha makes an impatient rush upon the library or drawing-room, be patient, be lenient. O! women, though I may fail to stir up an appreciation in the souls of others in regard to your household toils, let me assure you, from the kindliness with which Jesus Christ met Martha, that He appreciates all your work from garret to cellar; and that the God of Deborah, and Hannah, and Abigail, and grandmother Lois, and Elizabeth Fry, and Hannah More, is the God of the housekeeper. II. THE TRIAL OF SEVERE ECONOMY. This is what kills tens of thousands of women — attempting to make five dollars do the work of seven. How the bills come in! The woman is the banker of the household; she is the president, the cashier, the teller, the discount clerk; and there is a panic every few weeks! This thirty years' war against high prices, this perpetual study of economies, this life-long attempt to keep the out-goes less than the income, exhausts millions of housekeepers. Of my sister, this is a part of the Divine discipline. If it were best for you, all you would have to do would be to open the front windows and the ravens would fly in with food; and after you had baked fifty times from the barrel in the pantry, the barrel, like the one of Zarepath, would be full; and the shoes of the children would last as long as the shoes of the Israelites in the wilderness — forty years. Beside that, this is going to make heaven the more attractive in the contrast. III. SICKNESS AND TROUBLE. IV. OVER-RESPONSIBILITY. (Dr. Talmage.) Parallel Verses KJV: Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house. |
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