Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 204 · July 23
What She Could
“She hath done what she could: she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying.”
Bethany, two days before the Passover, in the house of a man they still called Simon the leper. A woman came in with an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious, broke it, and poured it over his head. The room priced it at more than three hundred pence, which at a penny a day was most of a year's wages, and called it waste.
She hath done what she could: she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying. Aforehand is the word to keep. On the Sunday morning other women went to that tomb with spices, and they were right to go, and they were too late. She got there while he could still feel it on his head.
Do yours aforehand. Somebody is on your list to honour properly one day, and the intention is genuine. The ointment keeps. The person does not.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 204 is Renewed Like the Eagle (Psalm 103:5).