Do what you can

Some days all you can do is hunker down and live through what life has brought to you. That's what trees do in the winter and it's good enough...

Just being here, alive and yourself, allows possiblities for the world to be a better place. Even just standing back and watching the dance of life around you is enough. You don't have to "do" all the time, you have to "BE" all the time. If all you think you can be is just alive - that's all you NEED to be. Living and loving is enough.

Whatever you can find the loving care, strength, time, interest, or breath to do and chose to do, is being your loving self and it is good enough. Whatever little bit you can do, it's enough.

Even Jesus didn't "fix" everything, only what came into his path. But he tells us that doing what we see needs done in love is enough...

Mark 14:3 - 9

And being in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he (Jesus) sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard, very precious; and she brake (opened) the box, and poured it on his head.

And there were some that had indignation within themselves, (they got upset) and said, "Why was this waste of the ointment made? For it might have been sold for more than three hundred pence, and have been given to the poor." And they murmured against her.

And Jesus said, Let her alone; why trouble ye her? She hath wrought a good work on me. For ye have the poor with you always, and whensoever ye will, ye may do them good: but me ye have not always.

She hath done what she could: she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying.
Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her.

This woman has been given no name. She could be rich, poor, married, single, loved, unloved...we know almost nothing about her. She could be any one of us that listens with our heart and does what feels most loving to us.

But I know she had heard the words of Jesus from someone she trusted and, in those words, (Mark 10: 33-34 that he would be killed and rise again in 3 days) she believed. She believed it enough to search her heart for a kindness to do for the man who had affected her life in some way that was so important to her that she wanted him to know she cared.

To the man that gave so much to so many, she gave a gift....

At that time most women were the responsibility of a man. Those that were not were considered low lifes...

Where did a woman get such a gift? Did she beg the gift of the ointment from a friend? Did she have to ask a husband or brother for the money to buy it? Did she sell her jewelry to purchase it? We can't know. But she found a way to get it.

She walked alone, through the house of a known leper, to make her gift. It's not a place many would go at all.

She didn't ask someone to hand it to him. She didn't give it to one of the diciples for him. (good thing too, or they would have sold it!) She walked through the home where a woman alone would stand out and be marked with shame. She went into the room where they were eating, found Jesus and applied it to his body herself.

When they began to mutter that it could have been used better to serve many other poor people Jesus himself didn't just defended her, he praised her action; "She hath done what she could."

And he told them, (I feel to make the point - again - that he had TOLD them he would be killed) "she is come aforehand to anoint my body to the burying."

In essence He said - This woman BELIEVED what I have said to you all.

And her belief and gift touched him so deeply that he declared, "this .. that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her."

Still no name given...why not?

I believe it is so any woman, any time, any where, that has "done what she could" will know that her kindness will be remembered and stand as a memorial to her.

Maybe what you can do won't seem like much. Maybe it won't seem to be good enough. Others may say you could have done more or differently -

But in God's eyes, when you have done what you could in loving care, it will be remembered.

And in the eyes of the one you do for, it will be remembered in their hearts.

Do what you can in love - it is enough.