Wasted, Totally Wasted
// December 8th, 2009 // No Comments » // My Thoughts
Wasted Life... Wasted Perfume
How typical!… that whore just wasted a whole bottle of perfume! What good does that do? The fragrance is so strong at first that you have to breathe cautiously lest you gag on it. Think of all the beggars that would love to have a meal and here she is wasting this valuable perfume as if it is nothing. Oh now she is wailing and crying… this is so embarrassing! like Jesus would want a whore to be touching him and rubbing his feet with her hair… who knows who else she has done that to just today alone!?
How many of us are so like this woman… self serving, sexually immoral, gaudy, loud, embarrassing… yet would we dare to waste the most precious things we have, even our lives… as a sacrifice to honor Jesus. That we would break our hearts, like she broke the jar of perfume and waste the contents on our Savior!
I say “Waste” for several reasons… My hearts desire is to daily be able to waste myself on others with abandon… with no thought as to the value of the gift! We so easily “Waste” money and time and effort on things that mean so little yet when there is a sacrifice to make for the sake of others… we would suddenly have the urge to be wise and discerning. It is a lie… but we have told it to ourselves for so long that we truly believe it!
I do not choose to live my life with caution… I have a strong aversion to the status quo… The older I get the more I desire to be earthy and wild and rough around the edges. To embrace my humanity from the perspective of grace, rather than to beat it into moral submission. I am learning to love the man that God has created in me… and learning to let me… be me… in his grace…rather than pretending to be perfect.
I say “Waste” because even our entire lives poured out with abandon does not qualify as a “token effort”
I say “Waste” because we should dash our hearts against the earth like the old bottles that we waste when we throw them away… without a care for their well being… because our love is not contained in our hearts… it flows down from God.
I say “Waste” because we should be so generous that it would sicken those who would feel satisfied with tokens of morality
I say “Waste” because anything that has not been poured out on every speck of humanity at the end of our days… would be more of a waste.
What stirs my heart more than anything is the desire to learn to “Waste” myself for the sake of the name of Jesus… because I have already wasted so much on so many other things…
Luke 7
36One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to have dinner with him, so Jesus went to his home and sat down to eat.h 37When a certain immoral woman from that city heard he was eating there, she brought a beautiful alabaster jar filled with expensive perfume. 38Then she knelt behind him at his feet, weeping. Her tears fell on his feet, and she wiped them off with her hair. Then she kept kissing his feet and putting perfume on them.
39When the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would know what kind of woman is touching him. She’s a sinner!”
Mark 14
Jesus Anointed at Bethany
1Now the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread were only two days away, and the chief priests and the teachers of the law were looking for some sly way to arrest Jesus and kill him. 2″But not during the Feast,” they said, “or the people may riot.”
3While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.
4Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, “Why this waste of perfume? 5It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages[a] and the money given to the poor.” And they rebuked her harshly.
6″Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. 7The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. 8She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. 9I tell you the truth, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”
Tags: jesus, Perfume, sacrifice, waste, wasteful, woman
