Reshaped: Attention | Week 3
Reshaped • A Life Formed By Jesus • Week 3
Luke 10:38–42Our Attention: Listen
Every day, something is competing for our attention and telling us a story about what matters. Mary and Martha show us that being formed by Jesus begins by learning to sit at His feet, hear His voice, and allow the God of love to shape what we love.
Key Concept
Listening to the God of love shapes us into people who increasingly reflect His love, joy, peace, truth, and goodness.
Reflection Questions
- What stories or voices have been receiving most of my attention lately, and how are they shaping what I love, fear, desire, or believe?
- What spiritual practice could help me intentionally sit at Jesus' feet and listen to Him this week?
Scripture
Luke 10:38–42
John 1:1–14
Zephaniah 3:17
The Gospels are filled with dramatic moments: Jesus heals the sick, gives sight to the blind, walks on water, raises the dead, and confronts powerful people. But they also slow down and allow us into quieter moments - living rooms, meals, friendships, and conversations.
Luke 10 gives us one of those moments.
Jesus is not standing before a crowd.
He is in a home with friends.
Mary and Martha, along with their brother Lazarus, were people Jesus knew and loved personally.
And in this ordinary setting, Luke gives us a profound picture of how people are formed by Jesus.
This story is a yes-and, not an either-or.
Luke intentionally places the story of Mary and Martha immediately after the parable of the Good Samaritan.
In that earlier conversation, Jesus affirms the command:
Love the Lord your God... and love your neighbor as yourself.
The Good Samaritan emphasizes the call to move toward another person in love.
Then Mary and Martha emphasize our need to remain attentive to God Himself.
Luke is not asking us to choose contemplation instead of service.
It is not:
Love God or love people.
Listen or serve.
Sit with Jesus or move toward your neighbor.
The way of Jesus is love of God and love of neighbor.
The problem is not that Martha is serving.
Serving is good.
The problem is what is happening inside her while she serves.
Listening to the God of love shapes us into people who love.
Before considering Mary and Martha, it is worth asking a more basic question:
Have we ever stopped to consider what it means that God speaks?
When Scripture describes God speaking, His words carry authority.
God speaks, and creation comes into being.
Chaos receives order.
Life appears.
But God's speech is not only power.
It is also beauty.
Gentleness.
Goodness.
Love.
The creation account itself has rhythm and poetry.
God speaks and sees what He has made.
It is good.
When God speaks, His words bring life, beauty, order, truth, and love.
In Jesus, the Word becomes flesh.
If we want to know what God's voice is like, John tells us to look at Jesus.
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
John 1:14Jesus is God's Word embodied.
And John tells us that He came full of grace and truth.
That combination matters.
Jesus does not speak truth without grace.
And He does not offer grace emptied of truth.
The voice shaping us is the voice of the One who is both.
To listen to Jesus is to listen to the God who speaks with grace and truth.
Mary sits at the feet of Jesus.
Luke tells us that Mary sits at Jesus' feet and listens to what He says.
For us, that can sound like nothing more than relaxed conversation.
But in Jesus' world, sitting at someone's feet had deeper meaning.
It was the posture of a disciple before a rabbi.
To sit at a teacher's feet was to say:
- I want to learn your way of seeing the world.
- I want your teaching to shape my decisions.
- I want my life increasingly to resemble yours.
- I am submitting myself to your formation.
Mary is not simply hearing Jesus. She is placing her life beneath His voice.
We are always sitting at someone's feet.
Mary's posture raises an uncomfortable question for us.
Whose feet are we sitting at?
Every day, stories are speaking into us.
News.
Advertising.
Podcasts.
Social media.
Entertainment.
Friends.
Family.
Political voices.
Cultural assumptions.
Every one of them carries some vision of what the good life looks like.
We are all listening to a story, and that story is helping shape the person we are becoming.
Stories do more than entertain us.
Stories tell us what matters.
They teach us who the heroes and villains are.
They tell us what should make us afraid.
What we should desire.
What success looks like.
What kind of person deserves our admiration.
How relationships should work.
What will supposedly make us happy.
We rarely consume those stories as passively as we imagine.
They train our hearts.
Our attention is never neutral. What repeatedly receives our attention eventually participates in our formation.
Attention may be one of our greatest treasures.
Jesus teaches that where our treasure is, our heart follows.
And one of the most valuable things we possess is our attention.
We have a limited amount of it.
Yet we hand it away constantly.
A feed asks for it.
A notification interrupts for it.
An algorithm competes for it.
A headline captures it.
An advertisement tries to direct it.
Whatever continually captures our attention gains an opportunity to shape our hearts.
Martha is distracted by good things.
Martha is not doing something obviously sinful.
She is serving.
She is welcoming people.
She is caring for guests.
She is trying to serve Jesus.
And yet Luke says:
Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made.
Luke 10:40The word Luke uses carries the idea of being pulled in different directions.
Jesus later describes her as worried and upset about many things.
Outwardly, Martha is doing good things.
Internally, she is being pulled apart.
Good things can become destructive when they continually pull our attention away from the One who gives those things their proper place.
Busyness can become a formative story too.
Our distractions are not always obviously unhealthy.
Parenting is good.
Work is good.
Serving is good.
Friendship is good.
Responsibility is good.
But a good thing can become an ultimate thing.
We can become so consumed with working for Jesus that we stop being with Jesus.
So busy serving people that our own hearts are no longer being formed by love.
So committed to responsibilities that we become chronically anxious, hurried, and fragmented.
Martha is serving Jesus while losing sight of Jesus.
Distraction can cause us to question God's goodness.
Eventually Martha speaks:
Lord, don't you care?
That is how far distraction has moved her.
The God of love is sitting in her home.
Jesus is present.
And yet Martha's internal turmoil has become so great that she begins questioning whether He cares.
Something similar can happen to us.
The stories receiving our attention can begin interpreting God for us.
Comparison can make Him appear ungenerous.
Fear can make Him appear absent.
Hurry can make Him seem irrelevant.
Disappointment can make Him appear uncaring.
The story we listen to shapes not only how we see ourselves, but how we see God.
Sometimes distraction makes us miss the life already in front of us.
It is possible to look at someone else's life and envy something God has already placed directly in front of us.
We scroll through someone else's family moment while our own family is sitting across the room.
We compare another person's friendships while failing to notice the people trying to know us.
We become consumed with the life we imagine we should have and miss the life God is inviting us to receive today.
Lower stories can make us absent from the joyful, ordinary life God has already given us.
What story are you living inside?
Before many of the biggest decisions in our lives, there is a deeper question:
What story do I believe I am living?
Our answer shapes how we approach work.
Marriage.
Parenting.
Money.
Success.
Failure.
Pain.
Ambition.
Identity.
If the story is primarily about proving ourselves, our choices will follow.
If it is about accumulating comfort, our choices will follow.
If it is about protecting ourselves from everyone who threatens us, our choices will follow.
Jesus invites us into another story.
Scripture tells the story of the God who is reconciling the world to Himself.
The Bible is not simply information to consume.
Scripture gives us the story into which God invites us.
The same God who spoke creation into being speaks through His Word.
The Bible reveals His character.
His purposes.
His grace.
His truth.
His work of redemption.
But the invitation is not simply to know the plot.
It is to live within the story.
We do not merely read God's story. We allow God's story to interpret and reshape ours.
Jesus speaks gentle truth.
When Jesus finally responds to Martha, He says her name twice:
Martha, Martha.
Luke 10:41It can be easy to hear those words as a reprimand.
But throughout Scripture, the repetition of someone's name often carries deep emotion and personal concern.
Abraham, Abraham.
Moses, Moses.
Samuel, Samuel.
Jerusalem, Jerusalem.
My God, my God.
Jesus is not humiliating Martha.
He is moving toward her.
Jesus does not shame distracted people back into His presence. He lovingly calls them home.
Jesus sees what Martha does not say.
Martha never says, "I am worried."
She does not say, "I am overwhelmed."
She does not say, "My heart feels pulled apart."
Jesus sees it anyway.
He knows what is happening beneath her activity.
And He knows what is happening beneath ours.
Jesus sees the heart beneath the hurry.
He does not see us as a number.
A demographic.
A consumer.
A vote.
A source of revenue.
The surrounding stories often want something from us.
Our money.
Our loyalty.
Our outrage.
Our attention.
Jesus wants to transform us.
Jesus is not another taskmaster.
This is not an invitation to leave church feeling ashamed that we did not read the Bible enough last week.
Jesus' invitation to listen cannot become another burden added to an already overloaded life.
How do we know?
Because the Jesus who invites us to sit at His feet is the same Jesus who kneels to wash ours.
The One who asks for our attention first gives Himself to us.
He serves.
He moves toward us.
He gives His life.
He goes to the cross so that we can belong within the story of God's reconciliation and grace.
Jesus is not taking from us like another algorithm demanding attention.
He is calling us toward life.
Our hearts resonate with whatever keeps singing into them.
A musical instrument can begin vibrating when the right note is sounded near it.
No one has to touch the string directly.
The sound itself creates resonance.
Our hearts work in a similar way.
The stories around us continually sing into them.
Some songs produce restlessness.
Fear.
Anger.
Comparison.
Anxiety.
Discontentment.
What is being sung into your heart, and what is beginning to resonate there?
Jesus has another song.
Into restless and distracted hearts, Jesus speaks grace and truth.
He invites us into the larger story of God's love and reconciliation.
Zephaniah gives us a beautiful picture of God:
He will quiet you with his love... he will rejoice over you with singing.
Zephaniah 3:17The God who spoke creation into being is not distant from us.
He draws near.
He knows us by name.
He speaks truth.
He speaks beauty.
He speaks goodness.
He speaks love.
Give Jesus your attention and let Him shape you.
Mary's posture offers us a picture of discipleship.
Sit at His feet.
Listen.
Pay attention.
Let His story challenge the stories that have been forming you.
Let His grace reshape your fear.
Let His truth reshape your assumptions.
Let His love reshape your loves.
When the God of love receives our attention, He begins shaping us into people who love.
Then we get up from Jesus' feet and love our neighbor.
This is the yes-and.
We listen to Jesus so that His life increasingly becomes visible through ours.
Give Jesus your attention.
Choose one intentional spiritual practice this week that creates room to sit at Jesus' feet and allow His voice to become louder than the stories competing to shape you.
- Notice: What voice, feed, story, responsibility, or distraction has been receiving the greatest share of my attention?
- Create space: Choose a specific time each day to put other inputs aside - even for ten or fifteen minutes.
- Listen: Read a section of Scripture slowly, pray, sit in silence, or meditate on the words of Jesus without rushing toward the next task.
- Respond: Ask how what you heard from Jesus can shape the way you love someone in front of you today.
Reflection Questions
- What stories or voices have been receiving most of my attention lately, and how are they shaping what I love, fear, desire, or believe?
- What spiritual practice could help me intentionally sit at Jesus' feet and listen to Him this week?
A Prayer for Attention
Jesus, so many voices are competing for my attention, and I am easily distracted. Help me notice the stories that are shaping my heart and the ways even good things can pull me away from You. Thank You that You do not shame me or send me away. You see me, know me, and gently call me by name. Teach me to sit at Your feet and listen. Let Your grace and truth become louder than the voices of fear, comparison, hurry, and restlessness. Shape what I love so that my life increasingly reflects Your love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control. Give me the attention to know You and the freedom to love the people around me well. Amen.
