Daily Devotional for August 30

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August 30                                                          Mark 14: 1-11

Feelings ran high that day in Simon the Leper's house. Everyone
knew the teaching of Jesus that the rich should sell their
possessions and give to the poor. Yet here was a woman of
wealth who squandered much of it in one extravagant act. We
who have our own confusions about money and extravagance
and pleasure are invited to come into the house and join the
party.

Where are you to be found? Are you hoping that you, too,
will be anointed luxuriously? How wonderful that must have
felt when she began to pour the exquisite perfumed oil on his
tired body! Does the woman's boldness in coming forward
so unexpectedly put you off? Who is she, after all, to take such
liberties with Jesus? We don't even know her name. And what
about the poor? Do you feel discomfort at the fact that there
are homeless women, men, and children on the streets all the
while that a jar of perfumed oil costing enough to pay three
hundred days' worth of a laborer's wages is being poured out
in one extravagant gesture?

The words that Jesus spoke that day, as emotions overflowed
in Simon the Leper's house, have healing power for us all. "Let
her alone... She has done a beautiful thing to me... She
has anointed my body beforehand for burying."

Whatever you face as you look ahead, ask Jesus for help in
leaving alone what is not right for you, for the ability to see
beauty in what you and others do, for the courage to do what
you can, and for the grace to hold in reverence the mystery
you cannot understand.

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From The Road to Emmaus - An inclusive devotional Edited by Joseph W. Houle

Emmaus House of Prayer - Washington D.C.1989