Alabaster Box

I remember in children's Sunday School, growing up in the Nazarene Church, a certain time every year when they passed out little red cardboard boxes with printed hearts to take home and fill up with coin change. After a few weeks, we were to bring it back and pour our box of change into an "Alabaster" offering. I always felt so proud each time I found or received a coin to insert in my box to save toward the offering though it was never much.

Looking up Luke 7:36-50. Jesus is anointed by Mary, a sinful woman. She came before him with her alabaster jar, wet his feet with her tears, wiped them away with her hair, and poured the perfume from her jar on his feet. While others mocked her, we see Jesus commemorate her actions in Matthew 26: 10-13.

^{Matthew 26:10} Aware of this, Jesus said to them, “Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me. ¹¹ The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me. ¹² When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial.¹³ Truly I tell you, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”

Reflecting today as an adult and with different perspectives, I am asking heavier questions, What's in your Alabaster Box? What are you offering or pouring out unto the Lord? Is it more than just your coin change or leftovers or is it everything you have to lay before the Lord?

Am I laying down my hopes and dreams? My burdens? My praise and worship? My whole heart?

The Egyptian reference to Alabaster is a "vase of perfumes." When I am around others, am I displaying the aroma of Christ? Are others invited in by the allure of my Master? What within myself am I displaying and pouring out to others from within my box?

I want to begin to think of what my alabaster box looks like every day; the things I insert in and what it is that I pour out and offer to the Lord.

And if you are a Mom like me, you don't always have to be outside the walls of your home to pour out your offering or heart unto the Lord or to others. In my daily home life, how am I displaying Christ's fragrance to my husband and to my children? Honor, patience, peace, laughter (yes, laughter. Joy!!) or are you as proverbs describes a wife as "a dripping faucet?"

We can change the atmosphere around us with the anointed fragrance of our alabaster jars.