perfume.

I love the story in the Bible about the woman who poured perfume on Jesus' feet.

I love that she broke all kinds of rules in that moment - in the eyes of the people around her.

The complete abandonment of her reputation - placing herself in a position of complete mockery....all because she knew she was completely loved by Jesus.

When I really understood that, my life was certainly changed....

But when I look at her. It's pretty incredible.

There are lots of incredible parts of that story....

Matthew writes that she poured a very expensive jar of perfume on His feet, John writes that she wiped it on His feet with her hair.

Her hair shouldn't have been down.

She shouldn't have been present at the gathering of men.

And what a waste of perfume?!

The people present ridiculed her.

People who had been touched by Jesus.

Lazarus, for goodness sake, who had just been raised from the dead!

We do that to one another all the time.......I think.

I'm learning that I don't know how to talk without italics?? Technology has done a good job of pointing that out to me.
Now, back to whatever I was talking about....

We judge another person's choices as godly or ungodly based on whatever argument we want to use.....but the truth is that the money belongs to the Creator of the Universe and it has never been about His need for our money.

Or our perfume.

But always out of an act of worship.

We know people who when their son was choosing where he wanted to attend high school he chose to be the diversity within a school that didn't have much diversity.
A very expensive private school.....to be the diversity.

I know of a church whose mission is to be there for people who may have been wounded by the church over the years...to reach a generation of people who have heard from Christians their whole life that they are not loved because of the choices they have made....I am for every penny that needs to build that church, because it breaks my heart that people would ever feel unloved by God.

One of the disciples that day reclining by the table with Jesus stated something that I have certainly said before, I am sure....."Why this waste? This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor."

Yikes.

We make money bigger than God sometimes.......and bigger than people.

Sometimes it takes a lot of money to love on certain types of people - sometimes it's expensive plane trips, or big buildings, or moving into a neighborhood you can't afford, or a school. Sometimes just trying to speak someone else's language costs lots of money.....when trying to reach a generation that is highly technological & media focused...sometimes it means spending money so they can hear.
So they can feel understood.

If it's out of complete love & response to the Father.....then it's perfume.

Perfume that well meaning people will call wasteful......

God called it beautiful.

A friend wrote a post recently about choosing to use money a certain way & I have had this post stored away for a while...waiting for the right day to put it out there.

It seemed right after reading their words.

We are people - individuals - created very specifically for different purposes. My prayer these days is that we would be united in the midst of our different purposes.
That we would spur one another along...not in our callings but in one anothers' callings.

My heart breaks all the time because I see people doing good things....really great things....and yet in the middle of it a judgement bounces off onto all the people around them.....guilt for not living life the way they are.

I have talked to more wounded people who feel ashamed for the "perfume" they are pouring out....because it looks a little different...maybe not as 'glamorous'.

I want so badly to have the heart of Mary......willing to give it all away, just to love Him.