Christian Family Services Ministry

9-21-2021 – A Word to the Wise – Some experiences are impossible for words

Have you ever walked by a place selling high-priced perfumes and caught a scent of the most indescribable cologne that you had ever experienced? Did that memory ever fade?

Notice the Gospel of Mark

3 While he was at Bethany, in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at the table, a woman came having an alabaster jar of ointment of pure nard—very costly. She broke the jar and poured it over his head.

This ointment was worth at the very least a year’s wages. For that place and period, it was the most expensive available anywhere. It soaked his hair, beard, all his clothing. That beautiful scent would have lasted a week or longer. Anyone coming near Jesus would have noticed it. It was the type of scent that would turn people’s heads.

That scent would have even lingered through the Passover meal

Have you ever been in a hospital or room where a person was experiencing horrible unremitting pain with nothing to stem it? Did you notice the scent in that room, near that person coming off that person?

Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to his disciples, “Sit here, while I go there and pray.” 37 He took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and severely troubled. 38 Then he said to them, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death. Stay here and watch with me.”

39 He went forward a little, fell on his face, and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass away from me; nevertheless, not what I desire, but what you desire.”

Then the governor’s soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium, and gathered the whole garrison together against him. 28 They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him. 29 They braided a crown of thorns and put it on his head, and a reed in his right hand; and they kneeled down before him and mocked him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” 30 They spat on him, and took the reed and struck him on the head. 31 When they had mocked him, they took the robe off him, and put his clothes on him, and led him away to crucify him.

Do you have any idea what Jesus would have smelled like at this point? Blood streaming down his back, side, and stomach. Hair matted with thorns sticking through his skull, and the lingering fragrance of that expensive perfume lingering in the air around him.

Sometimes a smell is worth 10,000 words.

Then in a saner moment how the Lord, the God of the Universe was willing to sacrifice His beloved Son, His only Son, in this manner for….….me.