BETHANY

BETHANY

I think we very little comprehend what Bethany was to the Lord. He was at home there because they rested in His love, but also He was understood there. Mary does the two things most pleasing to Him. She sits at His feet, hearing His word, and she anoints Him for His burial. The first shows she could appreciate His mind, what He would unfold to her; the other shows that the most precious thing in her possession goes into the tomb with Him.

^[p. 185] It is devotedness of a double kind: one to receive from Him alone, to have no thoughts, no mind but His; the other to declare plainly that what would most distinguish oneself in nature one has passed over to Him who went into death here. It fills the house of Bethany with fragrance. What living one was worthy of it if the One who has revealed the Father has died here?

No doubt the knowledge of His mind taught Mary and enabled her to confide in Him in the hour of her sorrow. She proves what He is to her when there is nothing to afford her one ray of light, and this prepares her for anointing His body for the burial. Thus the first part of devotedness, choosing the good part, leads to the proving of it all in His practical sympathy. I know His mind, Himself revealed to me; I know how He meets me and consoles me, in a scene of death; then follows the second part - devotedness, namely, that everything I valued here is surrendered to enhance the One who is dead as to this earth - known to us now as alive for evermore!

But it is the one who has sought Him for His own sake that knows Him in his need and sorrow. It is there you prove Him as the good part, and everything here loses its charm for you because He is not here. The wind and the waves test the house whether the foundation has been laid deep in the rock, and if the house does not stand the test it cannot fulfil the purpose of a devoted heart.

Mary’s action filled the house with the odour of the ointment!