My life hasn't been easy. My father was cruel to me after my mother died & I grew up in a household of men, with four brothers. Each of them learned well from my father to be cruel & life wasn't easy. I was pledged to be married to a friend of my fathers who seemed to be honourable, but used me, casting me aside when he had finished using me & broke off our wedding. My father disowned me, assuming there was something in me that had caused his friend to discard me & I did the only thing I could do, I fell into a life of prostitution. After all, I reasoned, men had used me all my life & been cruel to me, I may as well be paid for it.
So my life went on, from year to year, a relentless, grey sameness, on & on. It had become an existence not a life I led & I thought nothing could or would ever change, that I deserved no less & certainly no more.
I hadn't bargained for meeting Jesus.
I'd been on the periphery of various crowds following him when I had first seen Him. It wasn't just that I had seen Him, but that, despite my being where I always tried to be, in the background, He had seen me. That was what was the undoing of me.
Once He'd seen me, He'd caught my eyes & there was something in His look, something different to every other man I had ever seen, or who had ever looked at me. Men normally look at me like I am a piece of meat with which they satiate their appetite, but they never see me. He'd looked at me & in that one look had seen into my very soul, yet though He had seen everything I am, there wasn't condemnation or loathing, but acceptance & what I knew despite never having experienced it, there was love.
I think it was that which made me go back again & again, each time I knew He was going to be in town. He had become a magnificent obsession for me from that one look. There had been other looks since that first one, each looking deeper & deeper into the fabric of who I really am, ignoring what others think of me. Each look drew me more & more. The compassion, sorrow, love & acceptance in His gaze drew me irresistibly like a moth to a flame.
Then I heard He was going to dinner at Simon's house. I knew Simon & Simon knew me, so did his servants, so I was able to get through the crowds there. I took my jar of perfume with me, for I knew what it was I wanted to do. He was reclining at the table & much talking was going on - Jesus spoke as He always did, answering their questions, asking them questions they couldn't answer.
As I sat at His feet the tears began. I unstopped the bottle of perfume to pour over His feet & as I did so it was like the uncorking of all of my life, all the cruelty, the using & abusing poured out of me in tears as I poured that perfume over His feet. I remember well the moment I realised that although I had brought the perfume, I had forgotten a towel to wipe it away, so did the only thing I could do & let down my hair & wiped His feet with my hair & as I did so, I began to kiss His feet to pour out some of the love & gratitude I felt towards Him.
It was strange because although I knew they were all beginning to look at me & be aware of what it was I was doing, especially as I let down my hair, nevertheless, I knew that where I was, in this place, at His feet was the safest place I had ever been in my life & I had no worries. There were so many tears, on & on through the years of heartbreak, I'd never allowed myself to cry before.
Suddenly I became aware of Simon mumbling to himself, that wasn't unusual, but I also became aware that Jesus was speaking to him.
He began to tell Simon one of His stories, His parables. I stopped crying to listen to Him talk of debts & of debtors, of one man who owed much money & of another who owed little, though neither could pay. When they were absolved from their debt Jesus asked, which would love more. Simon answered that it was the one who had been forgiven more, but you could tell he didn't know what Jesus was talking about & was irritated.
Then, Jesus turned to me, looking straight at me & told Simon that I had been washing His feet, kissing His feet, anointing His feet. Jesus knew the perfume I had used was costly, but He knew too that what I had done in full view of Simon & of all those people was just as costly.
Time stood still & my heart stopped as He looked straight into me & told me that my sins were forgiven because of the great love I had shown. My sins, all of them, every seedy, filthy, perverted sin, He knew them all yet they were forgiven by Him in that one moment. That one moment that changed the course of my life & set me free from my existence to live life & turned all my despair into hope.
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