Martha has it all together. She arises early every morning, showers, gets dressed, and heads for the kitchen to prepare breakfast for her husband and family. Afterwards, she loads the dishwasher, packs her husband’s lunch and sends him off to work. She sees to it that her children are dressed, have their teeth brushed, and all their homework in each of their backpacks.
She has her weekly routine of household chores laid out before her. In addition to Monday’s laundry and changing bedding, she vacuums, dusts, and tidies her immaculate house. She takes meat out for supper, and bakes either chocolate chip, oatmeal or snicker doodle cookies to fill the cookie jar.
One day, her best friend and neighbor came over at 10:30 in the morning. “Time for coffee?” Mary asked cheerfully.
“Um, I was just about to bake cookies…” Martha’s voice trailed off.
“Can it wait? I have something very important I want to talk to you about.” Martha nodded. “Okay. What do you want to talk about?”
“You,” her friend said softly.
“Me?” Martha asked as she poured each of them a cup of coffee. They sat across from each other at a small table. 
Mary cleared her throat. “You are my best friend,” she began hesitantly. “Your house looks nice – always looks clean. I guess that’s what I want to talk to you about”
Martha gave her a puzzled look. “My clean house? That’s what you want to talk to me about?”
“Yes, but it’s more than that. Please hear me out before you say anything.”
Martha nodded.
“You are a perfectionist by nature – and there’s nothing wrong with that – God is a perfectionist too by His nature, and since you are created in His image, you will have some of His characteristics, but in an imperfect way. Stay with me here,” she invited. “You see, you are trying to make yourself perfect, and it is humanly impossible. Besides, it’s way too stressful to try to keep up a perfect image – one that says you have it all together.” She sighed before continuing. “God will make you perfect on the day you are conformed to the image of His Son, but before that day, enjoy being a human being; yet with anticipation of the day you will be made perfect and complete.
Martha looked down at her coffee cup as she listened to her friend say, “When God created a beautifully ordered world, it reflected His perfection, His love, His sovereignty. But your clean house is just, just a clean house. It’s not a home. It doesn’t reflect love – only cleanness. It reflects your wanting to be perfect, but being perfect on the outside and a mess on the inside is only going to stress you out. Big time! You are like a housekeeper without a home.“
Martha realized her friend was right. “You mean compassion is better than perfection?” she asked, thoughtfully.
“You’ve got it!” Mary said, with a smile. “Jesus said we are to love one another, even as He loved us. That means we are to value others above a clean house.” Martha nodded. “You are totally right.”
Shouldn’t we all show love to others by investing time in them and not in a polishing rag?