Surviving Holiday Entertaining: Lesson #3

Back to Mary and Martha's Holiday Entertaining Survival Guide. Lesson #3 comes from the second dinner in the New Testament where we meet Mary and Martha found in John 12:1-3. At this particular dinner, Martha served while Mary came to the table and poured expensive perfume on Jesus' feet, wiping His feet with her hair in a lavish display of worship. The house was filled with the aroma of the perfume.

Lesson # 3: This Thanksgiving, fill your house with the fragrance of worship. There are so many great smells that will waft through our homes this Thursday--the roasting turkey, the hot apple cider, the fire crackling in the fireplace, and the pumpkin pie baking in the oven. When I was a kid, I just thought of these scents as an automatic and natural part of the holidays. As an adult, I realize that they are all created by someone's thought and hard work--often mine! But there's another part of the atmosphere I want to concentrate on creating this year--one that will seem natural to the holidays as my kids look back on them in future years. Like a fragrance, the aura of worship, the attitude of praise, and the actual giving of thanks, can permeate the house and the celebration.

"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. John 12:3