Our meditation has been excerpted from the book entitled, Bound to Be Free, compiled by Jan Pit.  In the following short quotation from Li An (from China, a pseudonym is used to protect his identity), there is fodder for reflection and perhaps application: 

...a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard.  She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head. (Mark 14:3)

To be broken and then poured out is the secret of spreading the fragrance of the Lord through our lives.

Many a time we can't be poured out because we are not willing to be broken.

We must be broken before we can be poured out.  Each one of us has 'perfume' inside of us.  But the jar of selfishness must be broken.  When the selfishness and self-centeredness is not broken, the sweet fragrance of perfume can never be poured out.  The more we are broken the more fragrance will come out.

'The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise' (Psalm 51:17).

This brokenness can be the result of repentance from sin, the acceptance of circumstances or the willingness to offer to the Lord that which is very dear to us.  The result will be that a sweet aroma will flow into our own souls and through it to people around us.

A moment of introspection:  Brokenness.  Broken.  Poured out.  Sweet fragrance.  Not despised by God.  Sacrifice of God.  Broken spirit.  Broken heart.  More fragrance.  Mental images, these.  Images that break into our complacence and crash against our thoughts of relationship, between Christians, and between us and God Himself.  What does it mean to possess a broken spirit?  I think of scenes of horses being "broken"--being brought into the will of their master...  With those images, too, we see how God might give us the gift of brokenness:  repentance from sin, acceptance of circumstances, willingness to offer God that which is very dear to us.  Are these foreign to us, in our Christian walk?  Repentance?  Acceptance of circumstances?  Offering costly/dear offerings to the Lord?  Perhaps so, but they needn't be foreign.  God feels dearer and closer in those times in which we are not in control; our persecuted family knows this.  When we feel in control, we deny God His rightful sovereignty; let us accept our life in Him, and give Him the glory for what He makes of us.  Forsaking sin--laying our sins at the foot of Christ's cross--isn't this what God's Word calls us to do?  As we abjure the recklessness and fecklessness of rebellious sin, we may welcome the release offered by God through Christ.  Repent from sin--each day--and accept being a broken pot in the hands of the Master Potter.  In Psalm 19:12-13, the Psalmist pleads with God to mend his brokenness; let us join him in this plea:

12 Who can discern his errors?  Forgive my hidden faults.

13 Keep your servant also from willful sins; may they not rule over me.

Then will I be blameless, innocent of great transgression. (NIV)

 All to Jesus, surrender; all to Him, come, freely give.  We surrender that which leads us to abjectly and wrongly view ourselves as independent of God and whole.  Let us find our wholeness in Him, for He will not despise this.  And may the Lord’s sweet fragrance spread through us, broken to the world, but made whole in God.