Continual Burnt Offering: Daily Meditations, August 12 (12:3)
“Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odor of the ointment” — John 12:3.
THE highest exercise of which the human spirit, touched by divine grace and regenerated by omnipotent power, is capable is that of worship, which involves adoration, praise, and implicit devotion. Men may attempt to exalt love of mankind above love to God. But actually the second table of the law finds its basis in the first. He who loves God supremely will love his neighbor unselfishly. The breaking of the alabaster box released the pungent spikenard whose ravishing odor filled all the house. When the best is lavished on the Lord Jesus, forces are freed which make fragrant every department of human life.
The natural heart cannot understand the apparent prodigality of love for Christ. It was Judas who began complaining and so infected the other disciples with the same spirit of faultfinding (John 12:4). But the Lord Jesus understood the love that prompted Mary’s act and He valued it accordingly. He delights in a heart wholly devoted to Himself.
—Margaret E. Barber.