Lent 38: Costly giving

Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair.  John 12: 3

The perfume Mary used to anoint Jesus was worth three hundred denarii, which amounted to something like a years' wages for a labourer.

A years' wages.

Christians know they should be giving everything they have to Jesus, and we have come to the conclusion that the most precious thing we can give is our hearts.

I think it is sometimes easy to think that, once we have tried to give our hearts to Christ, the giving stops there.

The thing is, when you have truly given your heart to someone/something, there is no end to the giving that cascades out of you as a result.  If your heart truly belongs to someone, you will give all you have because that is where your heart lies.

So, as we give our hearts more and more to Christ, we will also be unable to do anything other than give more and more of our lives, resources, time and thoughts to Christ.

If we are 'only' giving our hearts, and then keeping all the rest for ourselves, assuming we have done enough, I would tentatively suggest that we have not actually given our hearts very much at all.

Mary gave Jesus her heart, and then it was a joy to her to give him something that was worth a years' wages.

Can you imagine?  Giving a years' wages away.... However much you earn, that is a lot of money and a very very sacrificial amount.

I am not saying we should all go and do that, for 'giving' to God (as I understand it) doesn't mean having nothing, it means using it for God, which might indeed mean giving a hell of a lot away.

I believe that our lives show how much our hearts belong to God.  It might not be obvious from the outside - that doesn't matter - but if we look at the way we choose to use our time, resources, thoughts, money and so on, we might get a picture of how much we have managed to give our hearts to God.

After all, it seems that we live what we love.