The Price of Oil...

"In only two days the eight-day Festival of Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread would begin. The high priests and religion scholars were looking for a way they could seize Jesus by stealth and kill him. They agreed that it should not be done during Passover Week. "We don't want the crowds up in arms," they said.

 
Jesus was at Bethany, a guest of Simon the Leper. While he was eating dinner, a woman came up carrying a bottle of very expensive perfume. Opening the bottle, she poured it on his head. Some of the guests became furious among themselves. "That's criminal! A sheer waste! This perfume could have been sold for well over a year's wages and handed out to the poor." They swelled up in anger, nearly bursting with indignation over her.

But Jesus said, "Let her alone. Why are you giving her a hard time? She has just done something wonderfully significant for me. You will have the poor with you every day for the rest of your lives. Whenever you feel like it, you can do something for them. Not so with me. She did what she could when she could—she pre-anointed my body for burial. And you can be sure that wherever in the whole world the Message is preached, what she just did is going to be talked about admiringly."

Judas Iscariot, one of the Twelve, went to the cabal of high priests, determined to betray him. They couldn't believe their ears, and promised to pay him well. He started looking for just the right moment to hand him over."

Thought:
Sometimes it's best to just let the Scriptures speak for themselves. So read these verses and ask God to take you where He will through them.

This is where He took me: I ask myself what was going on in the woman's heart to enable her to lavish this on Jesus. Whatever it was, I want it. I ask God to help me worship Jesus this Easter like that woman did.

Make Yourself at Home

"I've loved you the way my Father has loved me. Make yourselves at home in my love." (John 15:9)

A couple of Sundays ago we celebrated Mothering Sunday...we spent some time reflecting on a verse in John 15. This is the chapter where Jesus uses the picture of a vine and braches to describe the relationship between Jesus and his followers...a picture of connectedness...of intimacy...of dependency...of life.

Two of the most common translations of the bible have Jesus telling / inviting his followers to "Remain in me" or "abide in me". But the Message paraphrase of the bible has the phrase, "Make yourself at home in my love".

And it's this phrase I want to encourage you to spend a bit of time relfecting on now. What does it mean to "make yourself at home" somewhere? What does that look like? What does that entail? As I was reflecting, I was coming up with things like: putting down roots, settling, establishing, permanence, security, intimacy, belonging etc. And when you apply these sort of descriptions to understanding what Jesus is getting at, it kind of blows your mind away.

For a lot of people knowing Jesus is about rules and regulations. But here, according to Jesus himself, knowing him is about a relationship...and not just any relationship, but one of intimacy and connectedness...of permanence. His words are an invitation to come and find a perfect home in his love. 

Why not allow the truth of these words to soak over you. And if you're tired, rootless, searching for a home, then hear Jesus' invitation to make your home in his love.

"...in him all things hold together"

Have you ever seen one of these apple puzzles?

The idea is simple.....

break up the apple into its pieces, and then...

just put it back together again.

Nothing to it really!

And then when you've got the pieces correctly assembled you put in the 'core' piece...it slides down the centre. When that's in place, it holds all the other pieces together. It's the key piece.

I find that things in the real world can sometimes help me understand spiritual truths...not perfectly, but at least shed enough light on it to help me understand.

Let me explain...

There's a verse in the bible...Colossians 1:17...which says about Jesus, "He is before all things, and in him all things hold together".

What does that mean? It sounds like one of those deep, mysterious truths that we're never going to quite get our heads around. And to be fair, we'll probably never quite understand it fully.

But let me have a go...

The Bible says that Jesus is eternal....and that he was involved in every part of creation. And not just that he was involved in creating, but that in fact, Jesus sustains all things today....he keeps things going...his power is what keeps things together. In a way that we can't quite understand, if Jesus was to withdraw his sustaining grace and power, things would cease to be. Kind of like if you took out that central part of the apple puzzle....the whole thing would fall apart.

According to the Bible, Jesus is pretty important not just to you and me, but to the entire universe. 

Just a thought...