seen

Have you ever felt you were invisible? Perhaps you have sometimes felt you were so insignificant nobody knew you even existed?

I have a garden shrub like that. It is weak and spindly and it leans on the trees growing around it for support. It weaves its way up through their branches and is so hidden you don't really see it. Its leaves are insignificant and its flowers are just five, simple, white petals forming a miniature saucer.

However, this plant has one attribute that makes it stand out from every other plant in the garden and that is its perfume. It is sweet and heady and you can smell it from the other end of the house and all down through the garden. For a few brief weeks every year, visitors close their eyes, sniff, and ask, "What is that heavenly perfume?"

Invisible and insignificant the shrub may be, but its perfume is its memorial. It reminds me of an uninvited, insignificant woman who broke open a jar of perfume at the feet of Jesus. He said, "I tell all of you with certainty, wherever the gospel is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will also be told as a memorial to her." (Mark 14:9)

Her jar of perfume, like my shrub's perfume, was her memorial. Perhaps you, also, have a hidden memorial jar. Will you break it open at the feet of Jesus?

-elizabeth price