Jono's thought for the day
This morning it was a privilege to speak at the Sunday morning service at the CHO offices in Poipet. I was reflecting on Mary, my favourite woman in the Gospels and particularly that beautiful astonishing action at the centre of the passage where she pours perfume on Jesus's feet and wipes them with her hair.
I visualise the stunned silence in that room as the disciples and the guests and Martha and Lazarus and Mary and Jesus have their sense of smell activated, The beautiful fragrance wafts around the room and it is clear that Jesus's heart was touched by what Mary did for him.
We are reminded at the end of the previous chapter that he was underground, the authorities had outlawed him and were seeking to arrest him. It is as he approaches the last week of his life that Mary does this beautiful thing for Jesus.
It takes real courage to go for it and do the beautiful thing for Jesus. In our lives we often have those kinds of opportunities yet how slow and embarrassed we are to take them.
Mary just had one opportunity to do the beautiful thing for Jesus in his hour of need and vulnerability and she seized that opportunity with both hands. There was no sense of how little could I give and still look good. It was more like i could never have enough or do enough to repay you for all that you have done for me.
Here in Poipet we have been truly humbled to see the amazing things these wonderful Christian people in CHO are doing for the people of this area in Jesus's name. Whether it is setting up opportunities for boys and girls to learn skills like sewing or motorbike maintenance, Whether it is setting up schools on a mat in the outlying villages. Sometimes it is truly risk-taking discipleship like rescuing children and women from trafficking and the sex trade. We have met Christians from newly planted churches who are prepared to take in and foster children whose parents have abandoned them and gone to work in neighbouring Thailand.
In St.Finnians where I work we have been working through a Tearfund course called Just People. We are trying to discern what ways in which we can discern and make a difference in our local community.
There is much challenge and food for thought in what we see the people here doing and their heart and their willingness to make a difference and transform society.
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