I have been thinking about Mary Magdelene’s initial encounter with Jesus and how it changed her life forever. If you remember from Luke 7 Jesus is having dinner at one of the Pharisee’s house. At some point Mary the prostitute comes into the Pharisee’s house and begins to weep in the presence of Jesus, and she then begins to wipe His feet with her hair and the tears that had fallen on His feet. She then began to anoint His feet with perfume from an alabaster vial. This perfume cost about a normal years wage.
Why did Mary come and risk such rejection in the presence of these Pharisee’s? She didn’t come for physical healing. Obviously she came to be healed up on the inside, of all the unbearable guilt and shame she was living with. She came to encounter the life changing love of God experienced in the presence of Jesus, she had evidently heard about.
I believe as she stood there in Jesus’s presence that’s exactly what happened to her. She had never known such love, such forgiveness, such acceptance. It was transformational. She was oblivious to every thing around her except for the One who was loving her with a pure and perfect love. This is when she gave her heart totally away to the only one she had ever met Who could be trusted with her heart.
At the end of the story in Luke 7 Jesus tells her “Your faith has made you whole; go in peace.” Faith in What? Not for healing, which is how this phrase is used every where else. Again, faith in what then? I believe the answer is faith in the love of God she found in Jesus.
Do you have faith in the love of God? Do you live confident that Jesus loves you, even when you don’t love yourself? Are you confident that He delights in you even in those times when He is not pleased with your behavior? Do you have faith the fact that Jesus loves you at all times with a delight in His heart?
Let Mary Magdelene the former prostitute be your mentor.