There are things that sometimes God calls us to do.

And even as we do them in obedience, we can be ridiculed by the other people in the room.

And my hope today is that we will start to realize that it doesn't matter what anybody else has to say.

Because Jesus is our defender.

Today is day five of our study, our devotional study of Mary of Bethany.

And again, this is a short devotional thought coming from the She Here's Bible study

where you can get the full length of the content as we study these six women in life of Jesus.

Again, we are in John chapter 12, verses 1 through 8.

Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised

from the dead. Here dinner was given in Jesus' honor. Martha served while Lazarus was among those

reclining at the table with him. Then 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. But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot,

who is later to betray him, objected. Why wasn't this perfume sold and money given to the poor?

It was a year's worth of wages.

He did not say this because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief. As keeper of the

money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it. Leave her alone, Jesus replied. It was

intended that she would save this perfume for the day of my burial. You will always have the poor

among you,

but you will not always have me. So we made it to day five. And I just want to say I'm proud of you.

We've had a lot of things to work through this week. And today is a little bit less study heavy and more reflection heavy. And really what I want to do is I want to provide this space for you to kind of

think through and pray and process. But I have a couple thoughts as we close out this week for you to

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