Beginning of Lent: Loving Without Reserve

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, ESV 

The room smells like perfume and tension.

Mary of Bethany kneels at Jesus’ feet holding a jar worth a year’s wages. Conversations halt. Eyebrows arch. Before anyone can stop her, she breaks the seal. Oil rushes out — thick, fragrant, extravagant oil. It runs over His feet and spills onto the floor.

Someone whispers, Waste.

But Jesus calls it beautiful.

Mary does not measure the return. She does not calculate impact. Nor does she preserve a portion “just in case.” She breaks the jar and pours out everything without measuring the return.

And the room fills with the fragrance of costly love.

* * * * *

Over dinner with friends, I learned about the Chanel perfume that promised intoxicating fragrance when it left France. During World War II, an American soldier bought the bottles from one of the few factories still standing in bombed-out Paris. He sold some to fellow soldiers. One bottle he sent home to his mother, who waited for him across the ocean.

Decades later, the gift still sat on a dresser, now at her son’s home. Seventy years had darkened the perfume to the color of aged whiskey. Time fused the dauber to the glass. The fragrance remained sealed inside, never opened. Trapped. Perhaps spoiled. Perhaps forever lost.

The exquisitely scented perfume was never poured out.

Paul tells us that our lives are meant to be poured out as the fragrance of Christ — an aroma that signals His triumph (2 Corinthians 2:14–15). Like at Roman victory parades, when citizens burned sweet spices signaling to everyone along the streets that the general had won.

Our lives are meant to announce that Jesus won; he conquered sin and death. But here is the uncomfortable question Lent asks:

Are we living lives broken and poured out like Mary’s jar of nard?
Or sealed shut like that vintage bottle?

Lent begins here. The season we choose attention and self-reflection over distraction. When we shatter the seal of our cautious, guarded and controlled life to sit at Jesus’ feet and hear what he will say. When we surrender what feels costly and turn our attention wholly toward him with reckless love.

Because love never poured out ultimately hardens. Devotion postponed eventually darkens. And any potential trapped inside ultimately deteriorates.

Mary did not wait. She understood something others didn’t even yet see: Jesus is worth sacrificing everything.

So, she poured out both her costly perfume and her love. And the whole house smelled of fragrant devotion.

Reflect: 

Will you pray with me? Jesus, During the coming weeks of this season, break open the sealed places in my heart. I don’t want to preserve what was meant to be poured out. Forgive my cautious love and measured devotion. Make my life a fragrance that announces Your victory. Give me courage to surrender what is costly and trust that nothing offered to You is ever wasted. Amen.

By His Grace,
Gloria Ashby
Lay Leader