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.”
It is two days before the Passover, in Bethany, in the house of a man still known as Simon the leper. There a woman comes in with "an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious." She breaks the box and pours the ointment on His head. Some in the room priced it at "more than three hundred pence." With a penny as a day's wage, that was most of a year's pay, and they called it waste.
Jesus answered, "She hath done what she could: she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying." Aforehand is the word to keep, and it means ahead of time. On the first morning of the week, other women came to His tomb with spices. They were right to go, and they came too late. She came while He could still feel it.
So do yours aforehand. There is somebody you mean to honour properly one day, and you really do mean it. The ointment will keep, but the person may not. And Jesus promised that what she did would be "spoken of for a memorial of her" wherever the gospel is preached, so no love you give in time is ever wasted with Him.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 204 is Renewed Like the Eagle (Psalm 103:5).