Where's Your Ice Cream Cone?

Where’s Your Ice Cream Cone?

You’ve probably all heard that commercial that has a line in it that goes something like, “It’s

10:00 o’clock, do you know where your kids are?” Well, I’m here today to ask you, “Do you

know where your ice cream cone is?”

If you are involved in ministry, especially in a leadership position, it is very easy to get so busy

that you forget to sit at the Lord’s feet and listen— listen to His Word and seek His face. One of

the topics of discussion this past week at school was how we can get so wrapped up in “doing”

ministry, such as visitation, Christian Ed., teaching classes, etc., that the only time we read the

Bible is in doing sermon preparation. We don’t take important time to just read the Bible and

drink in God’s word. We get distracted.

How many of you are like me? Don’t raise your hands. How many of you are like me that when

push comes to shove and life just gets busy, your devotion time with the Lord is often pushed

aside? We don’t consciously say, “You know, time with the Lord just doesn’t matter. God will

understand. It’s not like He needs me to spend time with Him.”

If you really think about it, you are setting the Lord aside in order to take care of business, in

order to do what you think is really important. Yet, what we would consider an important

obligation, God considers a distraction.

Myth #1: Busy equals important.

We think when you’re really busy it means you’re really living.- actually, being overly busy cuts us

off from the time we need to spend cultivating the important relationships in our life: with our

spouse, our kids, our friends, our God.

Myth #2: Someone wins the rat race.

This is a lie because the rat race is all about "what you do" and God is more interested in "who we

are." A bumper sticker said, “The one who dies with the most toys wins.” Well, I seen the answer

for that one, “The who dies with the most toys, still dies.”

God will not ask on judgment day, "How busy were you?" Rather, He will ask, "Are you like

Jesus?"

Myth #3: Hurrying will buy us more time.

All this technology we now have was supposed to create tons of free time but, instead enjoying it,

we fill up that “free time” with more work. “Got more time, so I can do more work.” Here’s a

couple of sayings for you: “Death is natures way of telling you to slow down” because “no ever

went to their grave wishing they’d spent more time at the office.”

Maybe if we deliberately slowed down, took a step back from our frenzied activity, that would

give us the perspective to be able to see which things in our lives are really worth doing.

Myth #4: "Down time" is wasted.

We are made to feel guilty if we aren’t constantly "doing something."

But God instituted the Sabbath into this system called life, and Scripture is filled with the mention

of "God’s rest."

Concluding thought: The ultimate tragedy of the busy life is the same as the tragedy that Martha

faced - offered the opportunity to sit at Jesus’ feet, but she (and we) can’t spare Jesus any time.

Our culture promotes busyness. People expect us to be busy, maybe even overworked. It’s

become a status symbol in our society - if we’re busy, we’re important; if we’re not busy, we’re

considered lazy or shiftless. Busyness is our security blanket. It’s validation. It’s also a good

excuse for not dealing with the first things in our lives."

Many of you have probably heard this story a thousand times. The story of Mary & Martha

highlights the importance of our love for God. It’s no accident Luke puts the story of Mary &

Martha back-to-back with the story of the Good Samaritan which some of you heard about last

week. There are parallels between the two stories.

The Good Samaritan & Martha are unlikely heroes. You see, the boundaries & social codes of

Jesus’ time were clear & inflexible. A Samaritan would not be considered a model of

neighborliness and a woman would not sit with men at the feet of a teacher. Both stories voice

Jesus’ protests against the rules & boundaries set by culture.

Martha “welcomed him into her home.” and she sets about preparing this lavish feast. Now there

is a connection back to vs. 8 which reads, “Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome

you, eat what is set before you;....” Custom has it, Jesus was invited, therefore he must eat, and

Martha is fulfilling the role assigned to her by society. In doing so, she allows the secondary