Daily Reading
Daily Thought
A woman approached Jesus with a flask of top-shelf perfume and poured it on him, and the disciples objected, “Why this waste? For this could have been sold for a large sum and given to the poor” (Matthew 26:8-9). But this is Jesus, “the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). The Son of God became Son of Man, was born in a manger to die on a cross for the sins of the world. In “two days,” Jesus tells his disciples, “the Passover is coming, and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified” (Matthew 26:2). And, so, Jesus also tells his disciples, “Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a beautiful thing to me” (Matthew 26:10).
Look what everyone else did. The religious leaders hated Jesus and “plotted together in order to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him” (Matthew 26:4). They enlisted one of Jesus’s disciples, Judas, to betray Jesus into their hands, “and they paid him thirty pieces of silver” (Matthew 26:15). They put Jesus on trial before a jury of the Jewish council, and declared him guilty; “he deserves death” (Matthew 26:66). The rest of the disciples abandoned Jesus, and Peter, with a last chance to defend Jesus, denied him instead, “I do not know the man” (Matthew 26:72, 74).
But “a woman came up to him with an alabaster flask of very expensive ointment, and she poured it on his head as he reclined at table” (Matthew 26:7) and worshipped her Savior; and she got it right. “Wherever this gospel is proclaimed in the whole world,” said Jesus, “what she has done will also be told in memory of her” (Matthew 26:13). It just happened again.
Daily Prayer
My God and Savior, You ask for my worship, nothing more, yet nothing less than to love You with all my heart and and soul and mind and strength. To give You my all, just as You gave yours.
May I simply follow You, every step, every day. I want to do grand things for You, God, but the simple are harder, and I must begin there, to be content, to tell the truth, to serve others, to love my neighbor. This is the perfume of worship that pleases You. May my life smell good.
Amen