"MARTHA, MARTHA!"

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22350, 22 February 1936, Page 32 (Supplement)

"MARTHA, MARTHA!"

THE POTS AND PANS OF LIFE OTHER PEOPLE'S BURDENS by E. M. gubney ii Mary hath chosen that good part' which shall not be taken away from her. . . A comfortable creed for Mary. Yet someone must do the dull work, someone must serve, or neither the Lord nor Mary shall eat And, anyway, what about Martha? Did she want to bo Martha? Didn t she long to be Mary—to lay aside her serving, and with it the bitterness that was strangling her youth, to sit at the Lord's feet, in " that good part ? it is one of the ironies, the terrible injustice this life, that Martha is so little appreciated at her true value. Was there no one who saw, and still remembers her beginning, betore the iron entered her soul—when she was young and comely, not cle 6 , perhaps, like Mary, but gentle and now w hat we should do without Martha," says mother, complacently, with some vague ideas that the words are, in themselves, sufficient reward for all Martha s labours and self-denials; and does not realise that Martha, who is no longer a child, is appalled by the awful sense of responsibility that the thoughtless words lay on her shoulders. ~ , „ Martha is so strong; Martha was always done these things cumbered with much serving. In the beginning she accepted it, and in the onu, as ner vouth and a little of her strength depart, she begins to wonder a little, to resent the ease, the limelight of Mary's life that is so glaring a contrast to her own. It is is "so clever"; Mary who gets through so much," who does the spectacular things. Even when she condescends to dabble with serving, it is of the spectacular nature —elaborate cakes and puddings, rearranging a room that Martha finds time only to sweep and dust, painting the bathroom, cleaning the cupboard to which Martha can never "get round." "Mary really is wonderful!' says mother; for she. too, has come to accept Martha. Perhaps she finds, as the years pass, that unaccountably Martha grows a little difficult, a little sharp-tongued and unreasonable. " Martha is a good girl," says mother, "if it wasn't for her temper. I don t know what's came over her. She wasn t always like that. . ." . And there's the irony of it! That it was only when it was too late that Martha ' began to labour under that sense of injustice; to see, when she looked in the mirror, a woman old before her time, angry-eyed, hungrveyed, bitter of mouth—Esau's sister. So mother sighs while Martha hides her work-worn hands and the canker that is eating her soul. She never had Mary s i gifts—or was it that she was never eni oouraged to develon them ? So no one i hrings her gifts. All through her life shw . has shouldered Mary's burdens; and . through the years she is slowlv. bun i surely, developing into one of that sorrowful sisterhood which other people cannot do without —but wish to C*od I they could I