Mark 14:3-5
Recently, a friend of mine moved out of state. As the week leading up to his move was concluding, I realized I’d been so busy I’d hardly spent any time with him. Before I even knew it, he was on his flight. The regret of my wasted time slowly started to creep up on me in the past few days and I wish that I’d recognized that I wouldn’t get that time back, before it was too late.
This passage and the move both have me thinking a lot about waste. After this woman broke her bottle of costly oil over Jesus — it’s labeled as a waste by the people around her. Their justification being that she should’ve sold it to benefit the poor. This reaction reveals the dichotomy between performance and posture. Her intentional offering wasn’t wasted because she beheld the living Christ and poured out her oil on Him. What mattered in this moment was not the good deed itself, it was where it came from. She was not concerned with what would make her look good or holy, she was concerned with worshipping her Savior. Her posture was one of surrender, sacrifice, and obedience.
The response from the others speaks with performative undertones and a holier-than-thou attitude. They’re convinced that this oil had a better use than being poured on Jesus. The real waste was not the broken flask, it was that these men were sitting across the table from the King of Kings and they treated it as casual. A waste of time to be in the room with Jesus, focused on the wrong things.
Sometimes, we may get so caught up in trying to be like Jesus, that we forget to behold Him. If we spend our time trying our best to serve, treat people well, and do good things, we’ve wasted our time because we missed the crucial step of beholding Jesus. If we say that we want to spend an eternity in the presence of the Lord, praising Him, do our lives on this side of heaven reflect that claim?
Lord, would you slow us down enough to sit at your feet today?
Kassie Lowe
YA Women’s Intern & Worship Leader