The Fortune Poured Out in Cairo

In 1912, William Borden walked away from a fortune worth roughly sixteen million dollars. The twenty-five-year-old heir to the Borden dairy empire had graduated from Yale, turned down every lucrative offer extended to him, and booked passage to Egypt as the first leg of a journey to minister among Muslims in China's Gansu Province.

His friends were bewildered. His family's social circle whispered what Judas Iscariot had said centuries earlier in Bethany — what a waste. All that wealth, all that potential, squandered on people who would never appreciate it.

Borden never reached China. He contracted spinal meningitis in Cairo and died at twenty-five, buried in the American Cemetery beneath Egyptian sun. When friends sorted through his Bible afterward, they found three phrases penciled at different stages of his journey: "No reserves. No retreats. No regrets."

Mary of Bethany understood something that bystanders never could. When she cracked open that alabaster jar of pure nard — a year's wages pooling at the feet of Jesus — she was not calculating returns. She was responding to a love so immense that nothing held back could adequately express it. The fragrance filled the entire house.

Extravagant devotion always looks foolish to those keeping ledgers. But the Savior never rebukes a heart that pours out its most precious offering at His feet. He receives it, names it beautiful, and lets the fragrance speak for itself.