You're listening to Encounter, a simple daily podcast of sacred and mindful meditations

to help you encounter the divine presence of God all throughout your day.

If you want to have free access to the entire library of 500 meditations, I encourage

you to download the Encountering Peace app where all the meditations are free as they should be.

It is Wednesday of Holy Week. Yesterday, Jesus spent the day in the temple debating religious

leaders, and tomorrow, well, that will be the last Passover meal. But tonight, he spends time in

Bethany at the house of Simon the leper. I want you to imagine Jesus sitting at the

supper table with his disciples. A woman named Mary comes over and anoints Jesus' head and

feet with costly perfume. The disciples become indignant. Why did she waste the oil?

Well, tonight, the confusion is over perfume. Tomorrow night, the excitement will be over wine and bread.

So what's the problem? What is the confusion? It's about disarray and disorder, misplaced

loyalties. Saint Augustine observed that even love can be disordered when it seeks ultimate

happiness in temporal and finite stuff, even finite stuff like perfume and wine and bread.

So what things in your life lead to a deeper communion with God? What things lead to something

more akin to life? Well, I pray this meditation from Luke chapter 22 will help you remember how we

tend to spoil any good thing of God, human that we are. But by his grace, we can find order again,

somewhere deep, somewhere inside of us. Guided by the Holy Spirit, we can take the first steps to

address our problems by first reflecting on the chaos. So rest here as we begin, settle here as the

Holy Spirit opens your heart to what is disordered, what is out of balance, and what is betrayed.

Whether at first or last light, allow our time to be a divine sanctuary of stillness,

a retreat to a line. Take a moment and choose to be filled with the awe of God's amazing work.

As we continue, begin to take inventory of any distracting thoughts and choose to let them now

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