The Good Part

Before I write this, I feel like I have to explain that I’m agnostic. That is, I don’t claim to know anything about the existence of god. More specifically, I don’t care about the existence of god. I don’t go to church, and it doesn’t matter to me if you do or don’t.

This – of course – doesn’t exclude me from wanting to make the world a better place. It also doesn’t mean I can’t use a story from the New Testament to explain how I feel. I’m going to talk about Jesus.

Luke 10:38-42 tells the story of when Jesus went to visit his friends, Martha and Mary. He arrived at their place, and while Martha got busy cleaning up and making food (or something like that), Mary sat with Jesus and talked to him. Martha complained that Mary wasn’t helping her and Jesus told her something along the lines of “you’re worrying about the wrong things. Mary is doing the one thing that I came here for: being with me. That’s all that matters. It’s what we’ll remember from this visit.”

That’s my own paraphrasing. The language of the King James Bible has its own beauty: “Mary hath chosen that good part” (emphasis mine).

Among the miracles and admonishments of the New Testament, there’s this gentle lesson: be with the people in your life. Stop worrying about impressing them and give them your attention. Give them your time. It will make the world – theirs and yours – better. It’s the good part.

For the past several years, I’ve had the same resolutions, including “listen more” and “live in the present.” Those resolutions won’t change. I’ll keep making them.

Now that Shannon and I have our baby Cate, I want to make these resolutions more than ever. I want them to be with me, and I want to be with them. So we will.

Merry Christmas!