The next ten days will bring some spectacular events to our island community as we celebrate both as individual families and collectively as a community Thanksgiving and the beginning of the holiday season. For any who have ever hosted a family Thanksgiving, there’s an instant recognition of the amount of work that goes into preparing, hosting, and then cleaning up after the event. Then, when you make the event something for the entire community to participate in, the amount of work increases exponentially. Yes, it takes some dedicated volunteers to help pull it off, and when it works, it is glorious. However, there’s a potential downside to these events – at least for those who have offered to contribute their time to make them successful.
The risk is best exemplified by a story told in the 10th Chapter of Luke’s Gospel, when Mary and her sister Martha decided to host Jesus and his disciples at their home. Martha was focused on making sure that all of the details were taken care of to ensure that her esteemed guests had everything that she hoped to provide, and she was working her tail off. Mary, however, had decided that it was better to spend time in the presence of her guests instead of being completely consumed by the hostess duties. When Martha implores Jesus to tell Mary to get up and help with the work, Jesus instead tells Martha that Mary is the one who has her priorities in the proper order.
For those hosting events large and small this holiday season, the risk is that we become too much like Martha, focusing so much on being the perfect host that we forget to actually enjoy the company. What can make us particularly susceptible to this is when there aren’t enough people willing to help out with the various tasks that are involved with pulling off a successful holiday event. The work can certainly be overwhelming for those who are hosting, and it becomes easy to miss the joy of the event because there didn’t appear to be a moment to step back from the ever-present work to simply engage in conversation with the guests.
From this I draw two primary points. Starting with the lesser, if the event is one that you look forward to attending, consider finding out how you can help lighten the load of the hosts by lending a hand with some facet of the event. If the hosts don’t get burned out by all of the work, it is far more likely that the event will happen again next year. And the second, more important point is this: the people and the relationships are the purpose of these events, and the specifics of the events are just the means to the end. Don’t get so focused on the work that you miss out on the entire reason for hosting the event. What a tragedy it would be to have the King of Kings in your house, at your invitation, and find yourself too busy to actually spend some time with Him.
May you strike the right balance as you make the most of this Thanksgiving holiday season.
Peace and blessings – Pastor Aaron