When I was younger, I remember listening to a tape (yes, back in the day) of an old Christian kid’s radio show called Adventures in Odyssey. All my suburban-raised evangelical youth group compatriots know what I’m talking about.

Anyway, there was an episode in which we listeners were ~ transported through time ~ to Biblical lands where we could be a fly on the wall in Bible stories. The only one I can remember was the ongoing saga of Lazarus, especially the bit with Mary and Martha.

You see, like most of the publications written for suburban-raised evangelical youth group kids, this was coming from a place of uber-industrious SJ-type writers. Of course everyone listening would identify with Martha.

We are all too busy Doing Things to be bothered with trivial stuff like thinking or learning. Martha was the harried-but-perfect hostess, ignoring the party because there were dishes to wash.

I have this theory that the movie Frozen was secretly written by a bunch of ladies at brunch. I’m beginning to suspect that Adventures in Odyssey was too.

The whole point of that radio spot was that we need to quit doing things and learn how to listen.

The MISSING point of that radio spot is that the writers were probably projecting their own inadequacies, and completely missed that there is another entire subset of people who are 100% going to be Mary.

No way would you catch me doing dishes if someone like Jesus was at a party with me.

I’m the exact opposite; I don’t need reminding to learn something new but I absolutely need an alarm clock to get me to bed on time and to make myself do the dishes.

There are do-ers who need to calm down and focus more on being, and then there are be-ers who need to rev up and do more.

The Christian media I grew up with assumed we were all do-ers. It tried to get “busy” people to become more contemplative, never mind that a portion of your readership is going to try contemplativeness to the 2nd power and reach levels of non-effectiveness that we didn’t think were possible.

It’s funny what you start to see when you try to grow up and live your own life.