One Thing

“I don’t want your sacrifice, I want your love. I don’t want your burnt offerings, I want you to know Me.” Hosea 6:6 from the Living Bible

Martha was an overachiever when it came to serving those that came to her house. Any hostess knows that there are a million things to do and never enough time to do them. Prepare the house. Prepare the food. Greet the people. Make them feel welcome. Nobody can be served until everything is just perfect, especially when among the guests was the Son of God, for goodness sake! Nothing short of her best effort would be acceptable to her. That was Martha’s one thing.

And, there is nothing worse than sweating and working your fingers to the bone to get a meal ready for a group of people that you really, really want to impress, with no help, while someone that could be making your load lighter is totally distracted and unaware of your desperate dilemma. That was Mary.

Mary’s heart’s desire had nothing to do with food. She was single minded. When the Person she loved the most- the One who had rescued her from a pit, and interrupted the downward spiral in her life, and forgiven her, and completely transformed her life- when that Person was in the room, everything else paled in comparison. She would rather be with Him than eat. She would rather be with Him than impress people. In her eyes, everything besides Him became secondary, like a camera fixates on a subject, where everything else becomes mere bokeh (the blur surrounding a single, distinct focus). Being with Him, listening to Him, just looking at Him. That was Mary’s one thing.

David was king. He had everything anyone could want available to him. Literally, anything his heart could long for. He had gone to war and won many victories. He had the respect and adoration of thousands. His life was filled with lovely, available women. He ate the finest of foods. He lived in a palace. In essence, he lived like a king. But, his heart had been completely and thoroughly captured by One, to the exclusion of everything else. He had seen a glimpse of the kind of beauty that nothing in this world can offer. He had encountered the most beautiful Person in heaven and one earth, Whose majesty and glory thoroughly eclipsing any king that has every lived. No one could compare to this Beautiful One, that had been aptly described as being ‘altogether lovely’. David was drawn to this King of kings for one purpose. The single-minded pursuit of the man who some consider to be the greatest king that has every lived on the earth was to make his home in the house of the LORD, “to behold the beauty of the LORD” every single day of his life. That was David’s one thing.

The Lord Jesus Christ has a one thing also. In the book of Revelation, the church at Ephesus is given a list, of the things that- from His perspective- they were doing right: many noble and praiseworthy things. Next, He spoke one very small word- ‘But’- and then, the words that followed served to negate every good work that they had done, while leaving His monumental one thing undone.

“But, I have this one thing against you. You do not love Me as you did at the first. Remember how you once loved Me. Be sorry for your sin and love Me as you did at first.”

Their future, as well as our own, all depends on whether or not we are doing- not what we think is important- but what is the most important thing to the Lord. His one thing. To love Him with what He described as ‘first love’. Perhaps, that is not only the fervent love we experienced when we first encountered Him when we were so utterly captured by His beauty; but also the kind of love where He is first in our hearts, and there is not even a close second.

The woman who led me to the Lord, Aline Escue, had a favorite verse in the Bible that she repeated over and over again. It is found in Hosea 6:6, in the Living Bible translation. Speaking from the Lord’s perspective it says, “I don’t want your sacrifices, I want your love. I don’t want your burnt offerings, I want you to know Me”.

That sums up His one thing. What is mine?