Extravagant Acts of Worship

While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came to Him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on His head as He was reclining at the table.

When the disciples saw this, they were indignant, "Why this waste?" they asked. "This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor."

Aware of this, Jesus said to them, "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 for me will also be told, in remembrance of her."  (Matthew 26:6-13)



How often I have read this account quickly and missed what is contained in it. It's slipped in in the midst of the accounts of the plans to kill Jesus. Just a few verses, but they challenged me when I read them a few days ago.

A woman comes to where Jesus and His disciples are. She comes with an extravagant gift of worship for Jesus. She is so focussed on her worship of Jesus that she not only gives Jesus an expensive gift, she also breaks social norms to do it. Her heart is set on worshipping Jesus.

The disciples are watching this all unfold. But they are missing the worship of her act. They are seeing only the cost of the perfume. Money they decide could have been better used to help the poor.

As I read this I began to ponder who I would have been if I had been in the room that day? Would I have been the woman bringing my extravagant gift of worship to Jesus despite what others might think? Or would I have been one of the disciples who missed the heart behind it and judged the act a misuse of money? Challenging questions to ponder.

I think we all have moments of being the woman and moments of being one of the disciples. Although we don't really want to admit to being one of the disciples in this instance.

The person who we should want to be in this account is made clear in Jesus' response to this. He commends the woman for her act of worship. And He challenges His disciples on how they were thinking. Jesus doesn't condemn His disciples for their thoughts, but He encourages and challenges them to think differently.

Who would you have been if you had been there that day?

 

Would you have been the woman offering Jesus your extravagant worship - not for others to see, but because you felt compelled to do so in your heart?

 

Or would you have been one of the disciples, judging the acts of worship of another?

If we would have been one of the disciples that day and maybe we are now, the good news is that we don't have to stay that way. God can change our hearts and He offers us a second chance (and many more) to get it right with His help.

Five Minute Friday: True

It's Five Minute Friday again. This week's word is "true."


Do you ever share the true story of your life? You know the one . . .

. . . the one where you share your failures and mistakes, alongside the successes and the things you did right.

. . . the one where you're not defined by any one thing, but by the total of what makes you who you are.

. . . the one where you're honest and authentic.

It's probably not the story we want to share all the time. It's not necessarily the story that makes us look good to other people.

But the true story our lives is the one that people can most relate to. It's the one that lets people know we're human and that we struggle with the same things they do.

True . . . that's what it should be when we share the story of our lives with others.

We can tell the true story without sharing things that disrespect others or sharing details people don't need to hear. It might require us to be careful, but the true story of our lives can still be told that way.

Do you ever share the true story of your life?

Seeing Yourself as God Sees You

Since I wrote my last post on what we commonly know as the Greatest Commandment found in Matthew 22:27-29, I've been thinking about something that came up at the end of the post.

Jesus tells us to love our neighbours as ourselves. I finished that post with some thoughts on how if we are to love our neighbours well, we have to learn to love ourselves well too.

I've been thinking about that idea in the days since. It's an interesting concept to think about.

Some people may argue with me that we live in a world where we're told to place too much evidence on ourselves and loving ourselves. And others would argue that we live in a world where self-esteem is destroyed in many people and they don't know to love themselves at all.

I think part of the problem is the language being used. Loving yourself can seem to be a conceited  way of living. Maybe a better way of looking at it would be to see it as seeing yourself the way God sees you.

We need to learn to see ourselves as God sees us, because if we don't we'll have a hard time loving others well. There's nothing conceited about learning to see ourselves the way God sees us. That is the way God wants us to live. And out of that flows love for our neighbour, like Jesus talked about in Matthew 22:27-29.

The problem is that we often have a difficult time believing what God says about us, so we don't see ourselves as God sees us. We've allowed other people's opinions of us and our own thoughts about ourselves, to get in the way of us seeing ourselves as God sees us.

Scripture is full of references to how God sees us. Full of references that tell us what God sees when He looks at us.

• You are a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17)
• You are not condemned (Romans 8:1)
• You are God's workmanship - His masterpiece (Ephesians 2:10)
• You are chosen (1 Peter 2:9)
• You are a child of God (John 1:12, 1 John 3:1)
• You are an overcomer (1 John 4:4)
• You are a friend of God (John 15:15)
• You are forgiven (1 John 1:9)

Those are just a few of the many verses in Scripture that tell us how God sees us.

How are you doing at seeing yourself as God sees you?