“Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.” John 12:3
Imagine that you’re a senior in High School, college is next year and you need to start raising money to pay for your tuition. So, you get a job as a bagger at your local grocery store and work hard all year. It’s the month before college starts and you feel like God is pressing you to give all your money to some young missionary going on a trip or to your local church.
How would you feel? You wouldn’t want to give, huh? It might feel like it was a waste! You may think, and others may tell you, that God could not possibly be telling you to give all your money away to someone else. It’s just financially unwise!
This same concept is found in John 12! The “pound of expensive ointment” was equal to a whole years wage and Mary does something incredible by pouring it out on Jesus’ dirty and beat-up feet! Judas tells her she’s wasting her perfume on Him and it could be used for something more beneficial.
There has been no change. We still treat Jesus this way! We can be unwilling to “waste” our lives on Him. We cling to our rectangle-shaped security. We are unwilling to give up our plans and agenda to spend time with Him. We speak through our actions that what we have going on is simply too important.
We need to have hearts that desperately desire to “waste” our lives on Jesus, lives that care less what others think, what seems most responsible, or what is safest for the sake of praising and worshiping our King, Jesus Christ.
How can we adopt the heart of Mary rather than the stingy heart of Judas? Selfless devotion to Jesus is not wasted!
