When this song first dropped in my heart, I did a cover of it and posted it on Tik Tok. But there was something that just moved me about this song. The woman that Cece Winans sings about in verse 1 of her song is found in 3 out of the 4 Gospels, (Matthew 26, Mark 14, and Luke 7). This woman was known to everyone as a sinner; the Bible doesn't specify how she was known for what she did, but that she was known because she did it. It was the religious people--pharisees who were so focused on her past failures, that they were blind to what she was doing for Jesus. She poured out expensive oil unto Jesus, the best she had--she gave to the Savior, while those who the world and culture deemed “holy," scoffed and mocked her for what she had done. Jesus rebuked them for speaking ill of her, and told them plainly that what she had done was to preapre Him for the sacrifce He was about to make for them and for us, (remember, as out of line as the religious people were then and even now in the present, Jesus died for them too). He said to them, because of what she had done, she will be remembered and that's why her story is in the Bible and we're still reading about her 2,000 years later. She gave the best of what she had to Jesus and isn't that what He desires from us? This deep devotion and surrender to someone who gave so much for us?
In the last lines of the chorus of Cece Winans song, she sings, “You don't know the cost of the oil, you don't know the cost of my praise, you don't know the cost of the oil, in my alabaster box.”
That woman had to deal with being mocked, looked down on, and who knows what else, but the price she was worth it to get to the Master's feet. I've had a season like that recently, not exactly like this lady's, but more so where there has been a cost for the oil. There has been a cost for the praise and it has been deeply painful. Some of the hardest things I've walked through in my life thus far. And when everything in me wanted to be still in the sadness and lie down in the dark, God's Word, worship, and some loving family and friends have pulled me through. They're still pulling me through. I'm still feeling the cost, but God is here. And that is why Mrs. Winans song moves me so, not just in the way she sings it, but in the words she penned. So yes, there is a cost to the oil, there is a cost to going deeper in the Lord that we don't always account for. But oh to pour it out to the Lord, to pour it out to Jesus, it's not wasted. It's hard, even excruicating, but not wasted.