Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World by Joanna Weaver

From the inside flap: An invitation for every woman who feels she isn't godly enough...isn't loving enough...isn't doing enough

The life of a woman today isn't really all that different from that of Mary and Martha in the New Testament. Like Mary, you long to sit at the Lord's feet...but the daily demands of a busy world just won't leave you alone. Like Martha, you love Jesus and really want to serve him...yet you struggle with weariness, resentment, and feelings of inadequacy.

Then comes Jesus, right into the midst of your busy Mary/Martha life-and he extends the same invitation he issued long ago to the two sisters of Bethany. Tenderly he invites you to choose "the better part"-a joyful life of "living-room" intimacy with him that flows naturally into "kitchen service" for him.

How can you make that choice? With her fresh approach to the familiar Bible story and its creative, practical strategies, Joanna shows how all of us-Marys and Marthas alike-can draw closer to our Lord, deepening our devotion, strengthening our service, and doing both with less stress and greater joy.

This one didn't really grab me. It sounds like something I would like, need, be in tune with - but it didn't end up being any of those things for me. However, I took away from it one important message. A message about the lack of value in worry. On my bad days, I'm a worrier - I carry around the bills, and the notices, and the papers in a a folder or a Ziploc bag or just mashed in between the pages of my calendar and I don't DO anything with them except worry. On my good days, I am active, I handle each piece of paper, I log online and get the bills paid, I just do it. So these words about worry need to become my mantra!

"Fretting magnifies the problem, prayer magnifies God."

And then she goes on to quote one of my favorite authors, Corrie Ten Boom, "any concern too small to be turned into a prayer is too small to be made into a burden'. I'll never forget Corrie and her sister in the Nazi concentration camp giving thanks to God for the fleas. Now Corrie via Joanna Weaver has given me another nugget of gold to carry me though life.