Journey Through Lent - Day 32

Today's music is offered to us from our friend, fellow pilgrim and listener to the Daily Radio Bible Podcast, David Nevue, find out more at https://www.davidnevue.com/ 

Today's Devotional:

The fragrance filled the room, she brought with her a little jar of the most valuable and fragrant of perfumes, it was worth of us wages. She brought this perfume to Jesus because she was grateful. Because Jesus had embraced her and her family with his fragrant life.

She knew the difference he made in her own life and in the life of her brother, her brother Lazarus, who had died and had been in the grave for four days. The smell was something she couldn't forget. But there was something far more powerful than the stench of the grave that day. It was the aroma of life. It was an experience of God's love. Calling for her brother from the grave, from death to life. Nothing else could smell so sweet.

So maybe Mary could think of no better gift, no better offering than to bring the most fragrant of oils to pour out on Jesus feet, and to wash them with her hair. What a sight it must have been. The room must have gone silent at the extravagant display of love. As the aroma filled the room.

But there was another person in the room that was not taking note of the beautiful moment in the way everyone else was. He was blind to the offering of love that filled that room. This person had a stench in his nostrils so strong, that he could smell nothing else. And that person was Judas. Judas was filled with greed, selfish, ambition, pride, disappointment, and shame. And it was making him unable to smell the fragrance of life. Mark says that that night after witnessing Mary's amazing display of love, he went out. He couldn't get the stench out of his nose. So on that night, that this woman gave all this she had, this man took all that he could. He sold his own soul for 30 pieces of silver.

But john remembers the fragrance that filled the room that night. He wants us to experience it for ourselves. Maybe through the telling of this story. He's asking us to remember how Jesus calls us forth from the grave and offers us his fragrant and beautiful life. Mary knew it and received it. Judas did not. Today, perhaps St. JOHN wants us to receive the fragrant offering of Christ with you, Christ in you, Christ for you. Today perhaps St. John wants us to live in gratitude of the offering of his love for the whole world. may that be so

You are loved!