“Martha was distracted by her many tasks,” Luke tells us in our gospel for today. Many of us, all too often, find ourselves in that same situation, generally because we have chosen to try to keep too many balls in the air at once. Juggling our responsibilities, our desires, our physical, mental, emotional limitations, trying to do it all on our own, we neglect our “need of only one thing,” our relationship with the Divine. To get our lives back on track, we can learn from Martin Luther who said, “I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer.” Too many of us do just the opposite and leave God out of the equation almost all together.

Our tasks, our lists of things to do and our stress over them, aren’t our only distractions, however. Fear, worry, pain, our reaction to the circumstances of our lives, frustration, exhaustion, our attachments, not to mention “the seven deadlies,” all can distract us from the life of love we are called to lead. Few of us can deal with all the distractions we run into without bringing God front and center in our minds and hearts, trusting the Holy One to keep us focused on becoming “mature in Christ,” as Paul puts it.

Likely, not many of us start the day with Martin Luther, spending “the first three hours in prayer,” but we can all begin our day with the Divine in some way, choosing to use whatever spiritual practices nourish our relationship with God. It doesn’t matter what feeds our growth in Love—it will be different for each of us—but paying attention to God in some way, for some time (even if it doesn’t begin to be three hours) goes a long way toward enabling us to become mature in Christ, letting him show us day by day the way to deal with any distractions that come our way to derail us from growing into the incarnated love God intends us to be.