smallness

 

There is a smallness to my life. I spend long sunny days washing dishes and clothes, planning what to make for dinner, playing with kittens, and watching the minutes creep by till my husband gets home. Some days I spend several hours working on dry business-related tasks, and other days whole chunks of afternoon will go by while I sit on the deck by the waterfall. I have been guilty of discontentment, of downright frustration at God for not putting me into something “bigger,” “more important.”

But by the grace of which I am so undeserving, Jesus drew me back to His Word…as somehow He always does.

Now the Passover and Unleavened Bread were two days away; and the chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to seize Him by stealth and kill Him; for they were saying, “Not during the festival, otherwise there might be a riot of the people.”

While He was in Bethany at the home of Simon the leper, and reclining at the table, there came a woman with an alabaster vial of very costly perfume of pure nard; and she broke the vial and poured it over His head. But some were indignantly remarking to one another, “Why has this perfume been wasted? For this perfume might have been sold for over three hundred denarii, and the money given to the poor.” And they were scolding her. But Jesus said, “Let her alone; why do you bother her? She has done a good deed to Me. For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you wish you can do good to them; but you do not always have Me. She has done what she could; she has anointed My body beforehand for the burial. Truly I say to you, wherever the gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be spoken of in memory of her.”

Mark 14:1-9

Smallness. It is unpopular, it is ridiculed, it is called a pointless waste of time and resources. “Why has this perfume been wasted?” Ah, so familiar, but in different words: “Why has your young life been wasted? Why didn’t you go on an adventure and do mission trips and change the world while you still could? Why did you get married and decide to settle into this life of smallness?”

But Jesus said.

“Why do you bother her? She has done a good deed to Me. . . . She has done what she could. . . . Truly I say to you, wherever the gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be spoken of in memory of her.”

Jesus does not ask me to be great or important. He is great, and that is enough.

Jesus does not ask me to save the world. He has saved the world, and my responsibility is to live that truth.

Jesus does not turn away my smallness. He only asks one thing: Give Me everything you have.

It might be a bottle of perfume worth a year’s wages, or it might be a mere two mites. But the two mites that represent my whole heart are worth more than the million dollars, the three-week mission trip, or the number-one bestseller that represent only a self-centeredness disguised by religious words.