Expensive!

She has done a beautiful thing. Matthew 26:10

One day, a woman sought out the Lord. She brought with her an alabaster jar filled with perfume worth a whole year’s wages. In his gospel, Matthew says that the perfume was very expensive!

When the woman found Jesus, she softly and gently poured the perfume over His head.

His followers were ‘indignant.’ “Why this waste?” they asked. “This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor.”

But Jesus defended her!

“Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me. When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial. Truly I tell you, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”

The alabaster jar symbolizes great worship on the part of this woman. She was aware of the life about to be poured out for mankind, and as Jesus said, she would be remembered for this act of reverence.

What might our own ‘alabaster jar’ look like?

Jesus said the woman was preparing Him for His burial. Perhaps she understood the significance of her generosity toward Him, and perhaps not, but He saw in her actions absolute surrender and love.

Sometimes we are led to do things with our whole heart, soul, mind and strength that bring effusive honor and affection to those around us, but we may not necessarily know the reasons for why we do them. The aroma of such love, because it is of God, spreads to the hearts and minds of our receivers in a supernatural or other-worldly manner.

The alabaster jars of our lives are very costly. Abraham was asked to give up his only child, having already spent much time and energy anticipating the fulfillment of God’s promise in this child: “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them. So shall your offspring be.”

Abraham was commanded to give this promised child back to Him (Genesis 22)?? Absurd!

Yet, was it absurd?

Do we not have moments, as well, in which we give up our most prized possessions in order to follow the promptings of God?

Whatever callings we receive from God are alabaster jars of expensive perfume.

I’ve often wondered when life seems to be giving so much to me, how long will it be before I’ll be asked to let it all go back to the Father. Nothing here on this earth belongs to me anyway. It is His to begin with. If I lose it, I have gained His precious presence.

What did the woman suffer because of the gift she gave? No one ever thinks about that. Later, in her hunger or want, did she regret the relinquishment of her treasures as she had done?

I doubt she ever looked back. It was her crowning moment, a space in time in which she would always be remembered and perhaps she would never forget it as well!

What if the most costly selfless gifts of our days are the ones that become so stuck in or so imprinted on our minds, that the experience of loss goes absolutely unnoticed. Jesus is our primary view, our all in all.

Lord, how can we give anything to you that can ever express the fullness of our feelings, the expressions of our love, the tenderness of our hearts? We give our lives poured out, spreading as a fragrance to the world. May our relinquished deeds freely speak your words to the lost who have never met you. May our hands love and guide them to utterly forsake all else and follow you. What costs us most, we gladly give you. What you ask of us, we humbly comply. In Jesus name, we give our all to you. Amen.