<p>10:42 <i>But one thing is needful. For Mary has chosen the good portion, which shall not be taken away from her</i>- Martha was &ldquo;anxious and disturbed about many things&rdquo; (:41), but the Lord perceived that Mary was anxious and troubled about the &ldquo;one thing&rdquo; that was &ldquo;needful&rdquo;- and the context demands we understand this &ldquo;one thing&rdquo; as hearing the Lord&rsquo;s words. For her, as she sat there at His feet, it was an anxious and troubling experience. To hear the Lord&rsquo;s words is in this sense a troubling experience. Whilst we are saved by grace, the extent of the imperative within the Lord&rsquo;s teaching is without doubt &lsquo;troubling&rsquo; to the sensitive believer in Him. For we cannot hear Him without perceiving the enormous imperative which there is within those words for the transformation of our human lives in practice. &nbsp;See on Phil. 4:6. The one thing that was needful is surely to be connected by the incident, also recorded by Luke, where the Lord tells the rich young man that he lacks &ldquo;the one thing&rdquo; (Lk. 18:22)- which in his case, was to give his wealth away. Yet Mary did this, when she poured out her life savings on the Lord&rsquo;s feet. Sitting at His feet, hearing His words, led her to anoint those feet. She chose &ldquo;the one thing&rdquo;, of anxiously hearing His words, the lines in her forehead showing in intense concentration. And yet that learning of Him issued in something practical- she gave her life to Him in practice, by giving all she had to those feet. The rich young man lacked the one thing- for he was not then ready to give his life&rsquo;s wealth to the Lord. Moving the spotlight onto ourselves, we can hear, and yet do nothing. We can read our Bibles without the intensity of devotion which Mary had, and without there being any direct translation of what we hear and read into practice. We can be as the rich young man, intellectually impressed, and yet totally failing to accept the tremendous practical demands behind the most simple, basic teachings of the Lord. &nbsp;<br />Local Jewish culture stressed that the place of the woman was about domestic matters rather than spiritual ones. Yet in the incident of Martha and Mary, the Lord commended Mary for neglecting her domestic duties in order to concern herself with spiritual development. She sat at his feet, as if a student at the feet of a rabbi. As noted on :39, it&rsquo;s easy to forget that to sit at the feet of a Rabbi and the Lord was called &lsquo;Rabbi&rsquo; meant to be a disciple of that Rabbi. And women&hellip; couldn&rsquo;t be disciples of a Rabbi. It was all radical stuff.</p>