Mary had eyes for one: Jesus. Her motives were oriented toward him. She wasn’t driven to his feet by accolades and she stayed despite criticism. What she cultivated with this man, Jesus, in the quiet and ordinary became her greatest expression. This was radical love, according to Jesus.
In Mary, we see what it means to “waste” ourselves on God. In situations we might otherwise avoid or resent—the fourth-floor cubicle, the back row of singers, the laundry room—God invites us, through Mary’s forever-retold story, into an expression of radical love. The kind of unhinged love that lays everything at his feet—whether or not anyone else ever sees, approves, or applauds.
The pieces of Mary’s wasteful moment are a prism through which to consider this idea of hiddenness. It was a moment meant for God alone that God used to invite others to him. A moment in which she lived out no desire for acclaim and no fear of others’ opinions.
This invitation to embrace hiddenness grows from a seasonal, one-time invitation into the question of our lives: When no one else applauds you, when life is hard and makes no sense or simply feels like drudgery in the still quietness, will you hide yourself in God?
Sara Hagerty is the author of the forthcoming book Unseen: The Gift of Being Hidden in a World That Loves to Be Noticed as well as Every Bitter Thing Is Sweet. Learn more at SaraHagerty.net, on Twitter at @SaraHagerty, and Instragram at @SaraHagertyWrites. Adapted from Unseen by Sara Hagerty. Copyright © 2017 by Sara Hagerty. Used by permission of Zondervan. www.zondervan.com. All rights reserved.
