What Is In Your Alabaster Box?
Luke 7:37 (Amplified Bible)
37And behold, a woman of the town who was an especially wicked sinner, when she learned that He was reclining at table in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster flask of ointment (perfume).
My mother is a teacher, she has been teaching some thirty some odd years. I had the extreme pleasure of spending a year in the classroom with her as her assistant teacher, while she was experiencing some medical challenges. It was an experience to be a part of shaping and molding the lives of an up and coming generation. It was one of the most interesting dynamics to watch children as the progress from insecure, unsure beginners that enter the school year to proficient or advanced learners at the end of the school year. But one of the things that I noticed, was what one child may have walked away from an exercise, experience, or examination with, another child did not. It became apparent to me that what they placed in their backpacks (of experience), were totally relevant to how they viewed their experiences and the value placed upon each occurrence. It also had everything to do with how pliable the child was, how badly they wanted to walk away from the experience bettered; if they were able to yield themselves totally and reap the benefits in their entirety or not.
Isn’t this just like us what we gain, what we learn, what we experience in God is total up to us. It is total up to if we can trust God enough, whether we were forgiven much or forgiven little, whether we bent a little or whether our experiences broke us to bring us to the point of retention. How strong our faith, how obedient we became, how precious our praise and how humbled our worship is all about our experiences, and how we allowed God to effect change in us during these periods of time, or whether we allowed Him in at all. You see that light, the love of Christ, and the ability to give forgiveness, those precious oils of compassion and the fragrant scents of obedience have everything to do with us and what we carry in us as a result of our experiences, test, trials and our living. We have a choice to present piousness, pride, self righteousness and judgment to God as we tell Him how we avoided the ills and pitfalls of this life, or we have a choice to pour before Him our humility, our brokenness, our repentance, and our willingness to admit that we are yet one saved by grace not one that saved face.
As you evaluate what you carry in that private place, that protected place, that instrument that we hope to offer unto God, begin to look at who you are and how you got here. Begin to see what oils and fragrant abide there. Are they ones that are created by human means or ones that come only from allowing God to make us over again? When your box is opened will it wreak of flesh or will it, tantalize the nostrils with heavens glory and redemptions story? God knows and so do you, it might be time to replace the oils, perfumes in your box for something new…something fragrant and something fit to be poured out in God’s presence, instead of what is present right now!
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