The Alabaster Box
Author: Pastor Pat Aman
5/14/1999rev2023
Have you ever just felt like throwing your hands up and screaming? If you say NO, I will pray for you because we all have felt this way at sometimes in our lives.
When building Coffee With Pat website, It seemed that there was one problem after another. Learning HTML coding was a job. I, at times become very irate over this situation. But, as I prayed and turned it over to Father God. the Holy Spirit gave me the knowledge and wisdom to finally figured it out. I finally learned the new program to work on the CWP site.
I know that some of you maybe thinking, Pat, there are people who are sick, depressed, angry, and have so many more problems and issues then you not being able to deal with a website on the computer.
Well, my answer to this is, “that is the exact reason I need to be able to post devotions and maybe say something that may help those persons in their time of despair.
Since 1996 Coffee With Pat has touched so thousands of lives for the glory of God. People have been saved, healed and even stopped from taking their lives because they came across Coffee With Pat while searching the web for an answer to their hopelessness.
So, now you may understand while I have was in despair myself, when I was not able to post on the daily devotion site. I was not able to share Father God’s Word, as He had been letting me to do in the past. But, He was actually trying to show me a more accurate and easier way to reach more people, but I was making it hard. I was being stubborn. I did not want change. I wanted it to stay the old way……
See, there may have been someone out there who needs a touch from Father God’s hands and heart, and just possibly, the Word the Lord gave me to share on a certain day, or even today, touched them and turned their lives around. But, it took me (Pat) finally giving Father God permission to take me in a different direction. Father God is a gentleman and will not force us to do things, but gently guides us to realize what is best for us.
And, yes, just like you, I myself, may have needed that Word, touch, nudge from Father God, to step out of my comfort zone.
I as you, also have other things that come up in my life. I as you, have life daily situations to handle and take care of in my life.
I am one person, just human with daily things to take care of just like you do… And time seems to fly faster as I grow older. But, I just step forward, knowing Father God knows what is best for me.
I can hardly believe it is almost Christmas. I should be thinking of Mary, the mother of Jesus, but, my heart is thinking of Mary of Bethany (Mary Magdalene) annointing Jesus feet. She once was a broken person, but, Jesus touched her. Because Jesus had touched her and gave her a new life, the Holy Spirit spoke her to anoint Jesus, preparing Him for the steps He would soon take to walk the Road to Calvary.
I love the story of Jesus, Mary and the Alabaster Box.
I often tell people, “do not judge others by what you see, because you do not know what is in their Alabaster Box!”© PAA
She broke a box of ointment and poured it on Jesus. This ointment was valued at 300 pence. A pence was the daily wage of the average worker. Therefore, in modern terms, it was worth about $15,000.00. This spikenard was produced from a rare plant that grew in India. It was very expensive and many people saved for years to be able to provide this for their own funeral preparations. However, this woman, poured it out on the Lord Jesus.
A lot of preachers teach on the subject of how expenses the oil/perfume cost. Others teach that it meant Mary was giving her best, her all.
But, I think of it this way. ‘What was really in Mary’s Alabaster Box?
I like to imagine that as she broke the vessel so that she might extract every drop of ointment for use on the Lord Jesus, she was also showing Jesus every broken part of herself.
The vessel was her broken life, filled with the oil of all the hurts, sorrow, jealousy, hatred, disappointments and even happiness that she had experienced.
Yes, she had paid a great price in her life, the way she had lived, but, Jesus only saw the broken vessel as clay that He could mold into a beautiful vase. And he did not judge or smell the unpleasant odor of her sins, but the sweet smelling aroma of her love and her willingness to scarified everything to follow her Lord and Savior.
Whatever you may think about when reading this story, Mary gave all she had to Jesus for His glory! She totally opened herself up to Him. She did not try to hide one part of herself.
I wonder have we broken the Alabaster Box of our lives and poured out ourselves, every drop for Him? All the brokeness of our sinful lives.
God is seeking people who have surrendered everything they have, everything they are and everything they hope to be. He is looking for people who will assume the place of servants before Him. He is looking for those who will merely respond when He speaks to them. He is looking for those about whom He can say, “They have done what they could.”
I think of Apostle Paul also when I read this story. In 2 Timothy 4, he says,
“6 For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure is at hand. 7 I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. 8 Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing.”
I feel that after Mary anointed Jesus, she also, felt the very same way that Paul did.
Are you now ready to break the Alabaster Box of your life?
Please right now, open your Alabaster Box to Jesus. He is waiting to heal you.
“And when Jesus was in Bethany at the house of Simon the leper, a woman came to Him having an alabaster flask of very costly fragrant oil, and she poured it on His head as He sat at the table. But when His disciples saw it, they were indignant, saying, “Why this waste? For this fragrant oil might have been sold for much and given to the poor.” But when Jesus was aware of it, He said to them, “Why do you trouble the woman? For she has done a good work for Me. For you have the poor with you always, but Me you do not have always. For in pouring this fragrant oil on My body, she did it for My burial. Assuredly, I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be told as a memorial to her.””
Matthew 26:6-13
Please, today, open the Alabaster Box of your life and pour it out to Father God. Let the blood of His Son, Jesus, bury the sinfulness of your past under His blood.
Start a new journey today.
Devotion Written By: Pastor Pat Aman Book © 1996/2023 “Coffee With Pat Daily Devotionals” “Coffee With A Little Spice Of Life” and Westbow Press a division of © Thomas Nelson and Library of Congress Control Number: 2018910976a
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