Hello CW, Today we continue with our discussion from yesterday, what did Easter really mean to the woman with alabaster box, who wiped Jesus’ feet with her tears and poured expensive oil on it? why didn’t she sell the oil? was it worth it for her? what should Easter mean to us? Though Easter celebration and holiday is over, we can still study it together. EASTER FOR HER MEANT ANOTHER CHANCE. Imagine how she must have felt, kneeling there by His feet and hearing Him say ‘you are forgiven’. I imagine that she scanned through her mind, considering all of the different reasons why she shouldn’t be able to obtain mercy and while she was trying to convince that part of her mind to agree with the part Jesus was drawing close, she got to Him. Before the world interrupted and dragged her Saviour across the streets of Galilee, she found in one moment, a chance at finally getting it right IT MEANT FORGIVENESS AND A CLEAN SLATE. It’s easy to believe that you don’t deserve to be forgiven…even I struggle with that sometimes. I have never killed a man or broken a family… or done something the world may consider simply unforgivable, but I know beyond a doubt that every day, I do something or the other that makes me grateful for the cross all of over again. Now I’m not thrilled He suffered, I wish He didn’t have to but I’m grateful that He looked past how many more times I would get it wrong, and chose instead to consider how many times, I could get it right. So that just like Mary, I wasn’t only forgiven but I got a brand new start. It’s like the old was completely wiped and with just two sentences, Jesus rewrote her history and hushed everyone who dared to speak contrary. EASTER MEANT DEATH. Watching a loved one die is unexplainably excruciating. It’s so hard because first you are losing someone that you will never see again, and we all know that you’ll never find another person quite like the one you lost, but beyond that, it’s watching and not been able to do anything about it that makes us feel so hopeless and powerless. So imagine how she must have felt, watching the one who, just a few days ago transformed her life completely be treated like a common criminal must have hurt beyond words. I imagine her silently yelling, are you blind? How can you crucify the only one who can save you? Don’t you remember what He did for me? He is Jesus! IT MEANT SACRIFICE. I heard a preacher say once that Jesus died for the whole world, but if for whatever reason, there was just you in the world, He still would have died. That He didn’t just come to save a multitude and so if all that there was, was me, He still would have died. That takes a level of sacrifice that I cannot begin to imagine. I imagine as she watched Him, the first nail hammered into His palm, she screamed! EASTER MEANT A MEMORIAL. A REMINDER OF WHERE HE PICKED HER FROM. Memorials remind us of something: a memory of an event we wish to keep alive. In other words, it is something that helps us to hold on to, to remind us of important, unforgettable occurrences that took place at one point in our lives. I imagine that whatever happened to her after that night with Jesus, if it were me, I would probably have kept a piece of the flask, to remind me of what Jesus did, but she had much more, she was there, she watched Him so 5, 10 even 50 years down the line, when she told the story of her salvation experience, she would always start with a few days before Jesus was crucified… EASTER MEANT REDEMPTION. Simply redeemed is the title of a song by Isaac Carree and my favourite line is when he said ‘I’m far from perfect…simply redeemed’. That means that there is nothing human that I could have done to deserve forgiveness or Jesus calling me His own, I’m just redeemed. Jesus chose to buy me at an expensive price, when I wasn’t worth much in my own eyes, so that in His death, I found life and in His sacrifice, I found a home, and with every lash that broke His back, every scar that marred His skin, with every thorn that pierced His brow and every nail that broke His bone, He carved a place for me-right by His side in glory. IT MEANT LOVE: UNUSUAL, UNABASHED, AND UNEQUALED. ‘No greater love has a man had in that he would lay his life down for his friend’. I do not believe that there can be a deeper demonstration of love than this. There are people, in my life that I absolutely adore; every few people that I could do pretty much anything for and Lord knows that I love them to bits, but to die for one, any of them? Heavy painful pause. A read a book once by Ted Dekker that for me depicted perfectly what Jesus did. You see the male character of the novel, Jan Jovic fell ‘madly’ in love with Helen, a young woman who, regardless of her best intentions, couldn’t seem to give up on drugs, reciprocate or deserve his love and to the end, he never gave up on her, he just kept on loving and loving some more. At some point when he got so tired and weary of trying, The Spirit of the Lord spoke quietly to his heart ‘it’s only a whisper of what I feel’. This sentence always reminds me of how intensely God has to love us to give us chance after chance after chance and to accept us when we struggle with accepting ourselves. He never gives up, He never lets go. He just loves! And He is not shamed to be associated with us. He thinks us beautiful and wonderfully made; I imagine this was what Mary heard when He spoke those two lines that gave another chance. So in studying the life of Mary, I came to discover what Easter really means to me…that long painful walk to Calvary was for me. My sins were and still are been forgiven because He loves much!
References Simply Redeemed-Isaac Caree When Heaven Weeps-Ted Dekker
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God love is something I can’t phantom but am just so glad that am under the umbrella of His love.
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God’s love is something I can’t phantom but am just so glad that am under the umbrella of His love, and that’s one thing I always remember during Easter.
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