Marrying Service and Solitude

Finding the Rhythm Between Doing and Resting in Christ

By Jean Fleming

Throughout the ages, Christians have struggled to discern the proper balance between the cloistered existence and the life of reckless, zealous ministry; between bustling service and sacred hush; between Walden and whirlwind. We contend with the Mary and Martha inside us. (Mary sat at Jesus’ feet listening to what He said while her sister, Martha, was busy with the preparations for visitors in their home (see Luke 10:38-42).

To set aside everyday concerns and gaze uninterrupted at the Lord seems utopian and escapist. But the continual giving of ourselves in service for Christ brings a sobering awareness of our frail humanity and limited store. We become caught in the Mary-Martha dilemma, weighing the active life with the contemplative life.

To Work and To Wait

True service for Christ, however, occurs only when Mary and Martha marry – when neither isolation nor compulsion characterizes our lives. Bernard of Clairvaux wrote, “Action and contemplation are very close companions; they live together in one house on equal terms; Martha is Mary’s sister.” William Barclay also referred to a kind of coexistence: “The more one reads of the lives and works of great men, the more one sees that they have a twin capacity – the capacity to work and the capacity to wait.”

The Christian life should have a rhythm – doing and resting, speaking and listening, giving and receiving. The life of Jesus illustrates that perfect balance. This busy Man (in perfect harmony with His Father, Himself, and His purpose on earth), who completed to the fullest the work given to Him, withdrew for prayer – again and again. The scriptures indicate that Jesus worked at getting alone, just as He worked at serving and teaching.

From the beginning of His ministry to the end of His ministry, Jesus’ life was interlaced with periods of solitude. In these quiet times alone, He enjoyed a deep, abiding fellowship with His Father. Psalm 16:11 records David’s expression of the exultant delight of this kind of communion with God: “You have made known to me the path of life; You will fill me with joy in Your presence; with eternal pleasures at Your right hand.”