Fragrant Offering

John 12:3 (New International Version)
3Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus' feet and wiped his feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

John 11:2 (New International Version)
2This Mary, whose brother Lazarus now lay sick, was the same one who poured perfume on the Lord and wiped his feet with her hair

The perfume of paradise lost
fills the house
Adoration,
total abandonment
Impulsive,
lavish demonstration
of devotion
Costly fragrance
perfuming the hair
of one
who shows us how to worship
Mary of Bethany


Ephesians 5:2 (New International Version)
2and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

"Though nard is now rare on the shelves of the western perfumer, its name stood for centuries as an evocation of the perfume of the lost Garden of Eden,"
"Nard has intense, warm, fragrant, musky notes,"
"In Ancient times, almost every royal court guarded amongst its treasures jars of Frankincense, Cinnamon, and precious oil of Nard and Myrrh. Some aromatic resins were even treated as precious stones."
(http://www.biblefragrances.net/index.htm)

Song of Solomon 1:3 (New International Version)
3 Pleasing is the fragrance of your perfumes;
your name is like perfume poured out.

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