Love Grows in Obscurity

June 9, 2016

This morning I read the story of Mary and the alabaster box of costly perfume she poured out on the feet of Jesus, washing his feet with her tears and drying them with her hair. This lady was clearly desperate for Him! I get the feeling that there would have been nothing too costly for her, nothing too humiliating, nothing that could have restrained her complete and total abandonment to Him.

But I can’t help but notice all the obscurity in the story…
-Who was Simon, the leper? It would appear from a synopsis of the gospels that he might have been family to Mary…perhaps her brother or her father?

But it was he who said in his heart condemning words of her. “If Jesus knew what sort of woman she is….”
Don’t think for a minute that it would be impossible for a family member to be so unforgiving!

Simon, “the leper”, a Pharisee, whose home this story is set in, had clearly been healed of leprosy or else he would not have lived in the city nor would there have been a public gathering at his home. If he was the father or brother of Lazarus, Martha, and Mary and had seen Lazarus raised from the dead and had been healed of leprosy himself, you’d have thought that HE would have certainly been right beside Mary pouring out costly perfume at Jesus’ feet.

There’s really a lot about this story that leaves me scratching my head…

But I strongly suspect this…that there’s something far more behind the scenes than we are completely aware of…

Which I think is significant and maybe intentional, for learning to love Jesus happens in obscurity.

Is there not always something more behind the scenes in the life of a person who is just clearly uninhibited in their love for Jesus;
who pour out all they are and have at his feet;
whose emotions spill out like streams of water;
Who use every part of THEMSELVES to minister love to Him?

Had she experienced more rejection than we could ever comprehend?

Had past immorality seized her as a direct consequence of her great, great emotional need?

Had she lived her entire life searching in vain for one who would value her and give her dignity?

How deeply had she hurt?

And how completely had Jesus healed her wounds?

We only know that something bigger than we’re told had seized her heart and caused her to love Jesus with utter abandonment; that “we don’t know (Oh, we really don’t know!) the cost of the oil in her alabaster box.”

I don’t know what she’d been through, but there’s no doubt that life had broken her and that Jesus had put her back together!
We don’t know how very, very much that was worth to her because we don’t know her whole story.

Someday I want to hear her whole story!

Someday I want to hear YOURS…

Because I think there’s way more to it than meets the eye…

“And I’ve come to pour
My praise on Him
Like oil from Mary’s alabaster box
Don’t be angry if I wash his feet with my tears
And I dry them with my hair
You weren’t there the night He found me
You did not feel what I felt
When he wrapped his love all around me and
You don’t know the cost of the oil
In my alabaster box.”