Mary’s anointing of Jesus at Bethany should restrain us from being too quick to judge some act of artistic worship as an unwarranted extravagance. In an age of secular pragmatism all prayer and worship is seen as an extravagant waste, the greatest of all wastes—the waste of time. The secular pragmatist says, “time is money.” But the worshiper knows better. The worshiper knows that time is a gift from God, and that we have not properly appreciated God’s gift of time until we return the best part of it back to God in prayer and worship.
