There is a hill in Greenup County, Kentucky off of Route 1 near Oldtown with a cemetery sitting on top of it. It is my family cemetery, though no one has been buried up there for three decades at this point. At some point it sat on what was my family’s land, land they surely expected to be in our hands for generations, but instead now it’s owned my somebody else who won’t even let anyone go up there. I’ve only laid my eyes on it twice, once when I was kid with my Grandmother to check the flowers, and once when I was a teenager with my Mom and Dad just to check on it. Both times the current farmers’ cows roamed freely on the hill, the only thing separating them from the cemetery was small fence, that on occasion of my last visit had been partially trampled and the cows had gotten in. The pristine view of the rolling hills and Little Sandy River the cemetery offered was stained with the smell of cow patties and muddied with hoof prints.
After a good year or more of construction in October of 2002 my Mom and Dad moved into their dream home they had built. My Dad died just 3 months later. The driveway wasn’t even finished. Something he has worked and saved and sacrificed for so long for and he only got about 90 days.
Be it the old family farm or the house of your dreams we get so distracted by the temporary and we lose sight of what is valuable. It’s not the land or the perfect house or the career that leaves a legacy it’s our relationships with others. That’s what lasts well beyond the cattle trampling your grave and turning one of the most serene spots into a sewage plant.
We get way too distracted with “doing” and things that ultimately don’t matter we sacrifice legacy and moments for the temporary satisfaction of the perfect backyard or promotion at work. 
I’m incredibly guilty of this. I make my myself busy sometimes for the sake of being busy. In my mind, If I’m not busy I’m not making progress.
I see this happen a lot for me and a lot of other people when it comes to our spiritual lives. What happens then is we end up trying to subconsciously earn God’s approval by doing works. Or we distract ourselves with stuff, so we don’t have to deal with God at all. In either case the result is that we misplace our priorities. Our life becomes accomplishing a series of tasks that may even be good, but at the end of the day we never move any closer to God by doing things. Luke chapter 10 tells this story of Martha:
38 As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. 39 She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. 40 But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”
41 “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, 42 but few things are needed—or indeed only one. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”
Now if you are like me you hate this story. It’s my least favorite story in whole Bible because it hits home. I can totally relate to Martha. If you’ve hosted a bunch of people in your house, you know how much stress it can be to get your house picked-up and in order. What Jesus is saying here though is not that you shouldn’t clean your house before social gatherings, it’s that the work should never distract you from his presence, or the presence of others. In Martha’s case Jesus was there. Once he was in the room the work needed to stop so she wouldn’t miss the moment.
There is a time to do the work and there is a time to be in the moment. Martha here lost the reason to serve and what she says about sister reveals her heart. She demands Jesus tell her sister to help and in doing so she becomes like the jealous older brother in the story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32) or the workers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16) who worked longer for the same wages. She doesn’t realize that in her own desire to serve makes things just right she was neglecting the person she was “doing all this for.” She expected everyone else to agree with her priorities and she gets needlessly frustrated when everyone else does not.
Next to Peter there is honestly no one in the Bible I identify with maybe more than Martha. Martha is the older sister of Lazarus and Mary. I am the oldest in my family as well. And like a lot of oldest siblings I’m wired a lot like Martha. I’m Type A, I’m an 8 on the Enneagram, I can be overly blunt and defensive and get extremely frustrated when people don’t see the same things I see. While those all seem like bad traits, when given to God they can be refined and used for good. The story of Martha is here not to make us ashamed or to tell us to stop cleaning our house; it is to help us get our priorities straight. Because people like Martha and I end up doing a lot of things we claim are “for” Jesus and never spending any time with Jesus or with His people.
We get so caught up doing things that we miss Him and the moments with people that ultimately will define your legacy. If you have opportunity to be with God’s people and spend time with Jesus and you skip out because community is the most expendable part of your calendar? Your priorities are out-of-balance. We will fill our schedules with nothing but temporary nonsense that might win us a Resident Pride award, but then we end wondering why our family resents us and we have no close friendships. 
You’ve got a great lawn and a nice house, but who are you sharing that with? When you die you don’t get to take your lawn or your house or your career with you. You really want me telling everybody at your funeral how awesome your lawn was because I don’t have a line of people waiting to tell stories about how your life affected their life?
I’ve been reflecting a lot lately on what friendship and community is and how important it has been for me. I’ve had some crazy opportunities lately to do some things that would not have been possible without relationships I value greatly. And I see so many people not place importance on having those type friendships or community anymore.
We are NOT meant to go it alone. Jesus did not go it alone. He didn’t even only try to go at it with his just his immediate family. He grabbed 12 guys and spent the last 3 years of life doing everything with them. If Jesus couldn’t go it alone, or with only Joseph and his Mom and his siblings, and He is God, what on Earth makes you think you are better than God and can get by without it?
I would not be who I am, or where I am without me prioritizing relationships. It’s a constant battle on my calendar between busyness and people and who wins that battle every week ultimately says what you truly value. It is not your job, not your house, or your bank account that ultimately defines you. How you choose to spend the time you have on this side of eternity will communicate to generations in your family and community what you valued. Period. My guess is if I could chat with my relatives at the top of that hill in Oldtown, or even with my Dad, they would suggest we not take a moment we have with he people care about for granted.
That’s what I’ve been wrestling with lately and it seems a lot of people in and around me are wrestling with the same thing. My hope is we prioritize family and people. They are the best investments we can make.
Two Time Seminary Dropout 