Holy Spirit of Jesus, teach me to serve from a heart full of mercy ...

Jonah 3:1-10 & Luke 10:38-42
                                        
Both Martha of Bethany and Jonah had willingly entered into service agreements with God, Martha to serve dinner to Jesus, and Jonah to serve a notice of prophecy to the people of Nineveh. Unfortunately, both Martha and Jonah withheld undisclosed goals and objectives –Martha to serve the best possible meal to her friend and Master, and Jonah to be a ‘successful’ prophet, a harbinger of doom and destruction.  When the terms of their underlying purposes were frustrated by the Lord’s own works of mercy, each lashed out in anger. Martha, upset over all the work she had to do, said, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself?” Jonah on the other hand grimly prepared for the ultimate display of displeasure, his own death by suicide.  God’s response to both? “You are worried and troubled over so many things, but just one is needed,” and “What right do you have to be angry?”  Mary of Bethany, Martha’s sister, chose the right kind of service: sitting at the feet of Jesus, and listening to his teachings on the boundless mercy of God.  Will I like Martha and Jonah serve my own agenda with a heaping helping of anger, or like Mary of Bethany, will I serve God with a listening and a merciful heart?  Holy Spirit of Jesus, teach me to serve from a heart full of mercy.      
  
I wait eagerly for the Lord’s help, and in his word I trust. (Psalm 130:5)  
                                     
It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men [and women] as angels.
St. Augustine of Hippo
 
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Soli ad gloriam Dei