A Royal Waste of Time

When Jesus was in the home of Simon the leper on Wednesday during his last week, a woman poured a bottle of costly perfume on him while he sat at the table after dinner. The group around the table scolded her. But Jesus commended her. They thought what she did was shameful. Jesus saw it as beautiful, because she was preparing his body for burial. What she did was an act of worship and in it we discover that two components working together make Christian worship a beautiful thing—intentionality and expression. Both are needed. Expression without intentionality ends up in heartless worship and intentionality without expression ends up in lifeless worship. But together they bring out of us something very beautiful.