GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 14:7
The Lord Always First
An interviewer asked an unemployment office manager why the poor did not get jobs since the national unemployment rate is around 4% and there are “Help Wanted” signs posted on many businesses. Her reply was that the poor often do not have transportation. There are critics who claim that the poor are lazy and shiftless; they wouldn’t take a job if it were offered to them. But if an unemployed person does not have transportation, a job just beyond walking distance might as well be on the other side of the planet.
In M.C. Beaton’s book Death of a Gossip, the heroine is a young aristocratic woman named Rose who is sensitive to the poor in London. Rose spends time helping in a soup kitchen, and she finds jobs for unemployed workers. When Rose asked her aristocratic mother about helping a particular poor person, her mother told her it was against God’s will, because God places people in the state in which He wants them. This fictional conversation displayed a common attitude among the well-placed in a class society, and it is still not an uncommon, if unspoken, attitude in a democratic-capitalist society.
In Mark’s story about an unnamed woman’s anointing Jesus with some expensive perfume, the disciples assailed the woman for the “waste.” The perfume, they complained, could have been sold for a year’s wage and given to the poor. Jesus, however, came to the woman’s defense. “Then Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone. Why are you causing her trouble? She did a good work for me. For you will always have the poor with you, and when you desire, you may do good to them, but you will not always have me.’” (Mark 14:6-7)
There is no suggestion here that the poor should not be cared for. However, in this instance, the disciples had their priorities wrong and had failed to understand Jesus. His time was now limited to just a few days. Therefore, the poor are to be cared for, but never to the neglect of the Lord or His teaching.
Previous
Next
Directory