The church was about to throw herself into earnest labor, and she wanted her Lord's company for it. Notice what she says. Not "I will go," but "Let us go." What blessed work it is when Jesus labors beside us!

This is our calling as God's people: to be trimmers of God's vines. Just like our first parents, we've been placed in the Lord's garden to be useful. So let us go forth into the field! But watch this carefully. When the church has her priorities straight, she wants communion with Christ in all her work. Not after it. Not instead of it. In it.

Some believers imagine they face an impossible choice: either serve Christ actively or have fellowship with him. They are mistaken. Yes, it's frighteningly easy to fritter away your inward life in outward exercises until you cry out, "They made me keeper of the vineyards, but mine own vineyard have I not kept!" But there's no reason this should be the case except our own folly and neglect.

Here's a hard truth: the professor who does nothing can grow just as lifeless in spiritual things as the one who never stops moving. Mary wasn't praised for sitting still. She was praised for sitting at Jesus' feet. There's a world of difference! Christians who neglect their duties under the pretense of having "secret fellowship with Jesus" deserve no praise. It's not the sitting that matters—it's sitting at Jesus' feet that's commendable.

Do not think that activity is in itself an evil! It is a great blessing, and a means of grace to us. Paul called it a grace given to him to be allowed to preach. Every form of Christian service may become a personal blessing to those engaged in it. Listen carefully: those who have most fellowship with Christ are not recluses or hermits who have much time to spare, but indefatigable laborers who are toiling for Jesus, and who, in their toil, have him side by side with them. They are, literally, workers together with God.

So remember this in anything we have to do for Jesus: that we can do it, and should do it, in close communion with him. The work and the worship were never meant to be separated.