“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 odour of the ointment.” (Joh 12:3 AV)
What a picture of what true worship can
do to a household. Mary, the sister of Lazarus,
anointed and dried the feet of Jesus, preparing him for the coming crucifixion
and burial He would suffer for us all. A
pence, or penny, was considered a day’s wage.
Judas claims the spikenard used by Mary was worth three hundred pence. Or, what someone would commonly make in an
entire year. Very little is known of
spikenard as it is mentioned in the scriptures only a few times. What is known is the scent is very
powerful. It is often said of this perfume
there is no equal in its potency. When Mary
anointed the feet of Jesus, the perfume filled the house. There wasn’t a place in the house in which it
could not be detected. What a picture of
how much true holy worship can affect all those in one’s own household.
Last week, there was an odor coming
from the kitchen area. At first, I thought
it was our garbage. So, I took the bag
out and out to the dumpster it went.
That didn’t solve the odor problem.
It seemed to be getting stronger and stronger. There was a load of laundry going and the odor
smelled a bit like the detergent we were using.
However, it wasn’t quite like that soap odor. I kept sniffing. I investigated other possibilities and it
grew stronger and stronger. Then I had a
frightful thought. Could it be natural gas? We just had our furnace serviced and readied
for the winter. Could the furnace have
finally given up the ghost? But, no, it
didn’t smell quite like natural gas.
There was something wrong about that smell. It smelled much like the laundry, but not
enough to be the washing machine. I had to
find out. So, I went to the basement and
what did I see? Sewage was backing up
into the basement from the laundry machine going upstairs. PEW! After
the wash was done, the sewage slowly went back down the drain. But there was sludge left on the floor. The floor is a mix of poured cement and loose
dust. That smell wasn’t going anywhere
anytime soon. There was nothing I could do. It was 10:30 at night. Off to bed, we went. Our bedroom is on the second floor. We were twenty-five feet or so above the
spill with two doors between it and us.
But still, the odor came. It
filled the house.
But there was a solution. My wife is one of these housewives that loves
to burn those wax perfume burners. Not
the candles, but those ceramic wax decanters that warm the wax with a bulb
underneath. We switched that on and it
was amazing. As potent as the sewage
was, the was wax vastly more potent. The
more the scent of the wax-filled the house, the less we smelled sewage. Rather than smelling something like the
inside of a port-o-potty, our house began to smell like Sunday Morning
breakfast. The sweet smell of a perfumed
wax outbattled the putrid smell of human waste.
The pleasant smell won out.
When we live under a roof with others,
how we worship the LORD can often overcome ambiances of fear, strife, anger,
resentment, lust, or a whole host of negative influences in the home. It is just my wife and I now. No kids.
We have a dog. But no other creature
to which we can interact. My wife is an incessant
hummer. She hums all the time without
realizing she is doing it. The tunes she
hums are sometimes recognizable.
Sometimes not. When she hums
spiritual songs, it does something to the atmosphere of our home. She doesn’t even realize she is doing
it. But what she does is change the
disposition of those around her. She is
unaware. But it happens. People become more pleasant. People become more in tune with one
another. She worships the LORD as part
of her nature and it affects the entire home.
This is the picture the LORD wises us to see. If our homes are filled with strife, anger,
resentment, etc. maybe what we need is a spirit of worship where ever we go and
it will rub off an all who come in contact with it.
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