Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Reflective Wednesday

The story is read once.

Then twice.

Finally, a third time.

The blood flowing sticky hot, in-and-out of this pulsating heart, soul vibrations that interlace my story with the woman and her jar. The offering--the beautiful, tender, judged offering.

There is a cost to her worship. I don't know the backdrop that lead her into that dinner, that night, that season in her life. But she came. Came offering something so precious, so valuable, so rich with love...and she also brought perfume.  For the interior gift was the true fragrance wafting through the room that night.

Images weave in-and-out, in-and-out as they shuffle down my inner chambers, the hidden places, lowly places, painful places of the dark.

Why is b e a u t y always so costly?

For the alabaster heart has a wide variety of notes--some sweet and yet some unexpectedly sour that create the unique balance that make up this offering.

Notes of anguish, loneliness, fear, and shame.

Why these ingredients? How could these concoct something b e a u t i f u l ?

F a i t h  cupping the offering, I hold carefully the sacred jar, tentative that there is really anything beautiful to the offering. This expensive jar that tells of hope and disappointment, love and fear, beauty and tragedy, vulnerability and protection.

My alabaster jar. My sacred offering.

For what I bring is m y s t e r y.

Is this a pleasing aroma? This is all that I am, all that I have, it's yours....

And it spills, and it flows, and it runs, and it trickles, d
                                                                                    o
                                                                                          w
                                                                                              n

                                                                                   d
                                                                                       o
                                                                                           w
                                                                                               n.

Giving, blessing, offering l i f e, in the fragile and wobbly way that I know to up until now.

"She has done a beautiful thing...."

Bashful yet overcome by j o y.

He sees! He knows!

To be poured out...holy, sacred, costly, b r e a t h t a k i n g, frighteningly beautiful.

You have made it beautiful. You have made me beautiful.

His tender, loving eyes undo me. I am weak. Weak to catch them, weak wanting to fill the air with words, and insights, fill back up the jar with something to give again, something of worth.

But I have emptied out. 

And the heart beats, ooey-sticky l i f e blood pouring through, vessels beginning to pump to a new beat.

"I want to tell you a new story. A gospel story of interdependence, shared-in life, giving and receiving, not knowing where one ends and the other begins. A t r i n i ty life."

The heart pulsates with excitement and fear. Still recalibrating to the n e w  l i f e.

R i s k.

For the shared in life is risky, vulnerable.  But the invulnerable life is calculated, protected, shutting off the j o y oxygen.

For there is more to the story than at first seemed....

Just as I am to pour out my sacred offering--the beautifully, messy notes of my life I am also to r e c e i v e from another's precious jar.  To quietly wait, humble myself, soften, open up, and b r e a t h e  i n the unexpected fragrance of the unique notes in another's poured out life. His glory, our joy....

W o r s h i p.

Costly, beautiful, humbling w o r s h i p.












1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Nothing ventured , nothing gained. Better to give it your all than not at all. Give your best. RCS