Pooh Bear - August 27
Today’s Readings: AM Psalm 119:1-24; PM Psalm 12, 13, 14; 1 Kings 3:1-15; Acts 27:9-26; Mark 14:1-11
Not too long ago, I opened the door to my son’s room before heading to bed. There he was, sound asleep, snuggled tightly against his old Pooh Bear—the same one he has had since he was an infant. Its fabric is worn, its seams are stretched, and to anyone else, it might look like something ready for the trash. I know this stage in his life is disappearing so that moment of seeing what he has always found so important was important to me. To him—and to me—that stuffed animal is precious. That bear has absorbed countless tears, shared endless nights of comfort, and traveled the journey of his childhood. What someone else might dismiss as nothing special is, in fact, a treasure.
That’s what comes to mind when I read about the unnamed woman who anointed Jesus at Bethany. She pours out an alabaster jar of perfume—something costly and extravagant—over his head. Those watching are quick to criticize: “What a waste! That could have been sold and given to the poor.” They cannot see what she sees.
Of course, we know Jesus as extraordinary. But in that room he looked like an ordinary rabbi, a teacher surrounded by followers. No one else in that moment recognized the depth of who he was or what he was facing. Yet she did. She saw something sacred, and she responded with extravagant love.
Jesus defends her: “She has done a beautiful thing to me… she has anointed my body beforehand for burial.” The others measured her action by economics, efficiency, and logic. She measured by love.
Faith so often asks us to see differently, to notice the holiness in the ordinary, to recognize beauty where others see waste, to value love more than logic. Like my son’s bear, the value is not in what it looks like or how much it costs, but in the story it carries and the love it embodies. Maybe this is why as Christian’s we are called to hold each other, every human being as the most precious gift and responsibility of our faith because in the best of circumstances humans are the perfect embodiment of someone’s love and we should at least assume that about each other.
The question for us is this: what do we see as precious that others might overlook? And are we willing, like the woman at Bethany, to pour ourselves out in extravagant love, even when the world calls it wasteful? Maybe it’s the people that our culture sees as not necessary or pushes to the margins of society. Maybe it’s our time that we so easily fill when we pull out our smart phones. Maybe it’s in the relationships we have let fade. There is so much that is precious because it belongs to God and we just have to see how important it is to the one who made it.
John+
Questions for Self-Reflection: “What do we see as precious that others might overlook? And are we willing, like the woman at Bethany, to pour ourselves out in extravagant love, even when the world calls it wasteful?