Alabaster Jar
Do I have an alabaster jar
to break for the Lord?
I believe every child of His does.
The value is what’s inside.
He knows our intentions
in the depth of our heart.
Others don’t see this way
Our actions are what they know.
Help me o’ God to give my best.
I pray my offering is worthy.
The jar must be broken
to see what I hold as precious.
The treasure of this world
is not of the Lord.
His are spiritual indeed
my jar also spiritual must be.
Love is how I show who I am.
and joy shines from my smile.
Giving to others of what I have
is the only thing worthwhile.
The collection turns outward for the first time. Having stilled the mind, faced the eternal questions, embraced vocation, and released regret, Scott now asks what the interior life — thus disciplined and thus freed — actually has to offer. The alabaster jar is drawn from the biblical account of a woman who broke a jar of costly perfume in an act of extravagant and uncalculated devotion. Scott inhabits that image personally and asks what his own jar contains and what it would cost to break it open. This is the collection’s most spiritually imaginative poem.
This poem arrived as a question I could not stop asking — what do I actually have to offer? Not in the abstract but specifically, today, broken open and given. The alabaster jar image answered that question for me. The jar must be broken for the contents to be known and given. What I hold as most precious — love, joy, the giving of self — is invisible until the moment of breaking. I am still learning what it means to break willingly. But I believe it is the most important thing a man can do.