Hold Me Now

Here I am again after reading Having A Mary Heart in a Martha World.  New day, new insight. Today's reading centered around Mary's extravagant love, the manner in which she tended to Jesus' heart right before he was arrested.  The day she broke the alabaster jar full of perfume and anointed the Lord's feet.  The day she gave her best to honor and comfort her Savior.  I love the song by Jennifer Knapp "Hold Me Now" which references this beautiful scene.  "She is strong enough to stand in Your love, I can hear her say: I'm weak, I'm poor, I'm broken Lord but I'm Yours.  Hold me now."  Poignant and precious.

But to the passage from today.  As I read about Mary's extravagant love, I discovered that the same heart that offers such pure worship is the same heart that can find the deepest despair.   The passage reads: 

"From all appearances, Mary seems to have been contemplative by nature.  And while spiritual intuitiveness made her a wonderful worshipper, it also made her susceptible to despair.  Instead of running to meet Jesus after Lazarus died, if you remember, she remained in the house.  Downcast and alone amid the crowd of friends, she had sunk deeper and deeper into her grief, and even the news of Jesus' coming had not been able to lift her sorrow.

But--thank God!--Jesus meets us where we are.  He comes into those dark, hidden corners of our lives and, if we're willing, he shines the sweet spotlight of heaven, his precious Holy Spirit. If we allow him, he offers to clean our our personalities, tempering them through the Holy Spirit so we won't fall to the strong sides of our weaknesses and the weak sides of our strengths.

And that, as far as we can tell, is what happened to Mary.  Even though she sensed, with her keen intuitiveness, the graveness of her Lord's situation, this time she did not collapse.  Instead of just sitting  passively and listening to the Savior, instead of being overwhelmed by grief, this time Mary responded.  She gave herself in worship to the One who had given so much to her and her family."

There's a lot here, but the most powerful piece to me is that it is the same heart the one that feels love so deeply and the one that so deeply grieves.  It is sometimes our most beautiful attributes that can make us weak.  It is the most precious gifts from God that can easily be corrupted.  But that's why God meets us where we are and fills in those gaps.  He, as Jennifer Knapp so gracefully puts it, holds us NOW.