We don’t always understand what God is doing in our life, but we do not always understand what we are doing to God either.  We do not always know that we have hurt God and even if we do, we may not know how badly we have hurt God.  But there is something else we must know: We do not always know the good that we have done for God, either.  We may think that what we do for God is just okay but to God, it is more than okay.  It is great and it is significant.

In Mark 14 we can read the account of Jesus’ being anointed by a woman in the house of Simon the leper with a very costly oil of spikenard.  Seeing what she did some of His disciples were not too happy and criticized her sharply for wasting this much money on Jesus’ head.  In response, Jesus said, “Let her alone.  Why do you trouble her?  She has done a good work for Me . . . . She has come beforehand to anoint My body for burial” (Verses 6-8). 

We do not know who hurled those criticism to this woman, but I do not think the reason for it was as pure as it sounded: do not waste money but use it to help the poor.  I suspect tucked in their hearts was feeling of shame: that they never had that spirit of giving; that they’d never done anything special for Jesus, their spiritual mentor.  Yet this woman, who was not a disciple of Jesus, would make this tremendous sacrifice to show her love and appreciation to Jesus.

But this is what is important: This woman did not know how good her deed was.  She came to pour oil on Jesus’ head to show her love and appreciation but unbeknownst to her, she was pre-anointing the to-be-killed-and-buried-body of Jesus.  For that, Jesus said, what she had done would be “told as a memorial to her” anytime “this Gospel is preached in the whole world” (Verse 9).  She had no clue.  Nor do we.  We do not always know the good that we do to Jesus.

Pastor Paul