Refreshed! (part 6): Anointing

Lee is right when he calls me the Closure Queen. It seems to me I was in the middle of recapping a retreat that was SO good! In fact, here's where we were before I got sidetracked.

The Lord is My Shepherd

Quiet Waters

My Guide

The Valley

The Table

Only one more lesson to go after this one. If I don't put them in writing, I will forget them. And believe me, I can't afford to forget.

"You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows."

Anointing. In the interest of full disclosure, while I managed to photograph pretty much every element of the 23rd Psalm on the grounds of the retreat center, there was not a whole lot of anointing going on.  Nor were there any shepherds, or even sheep for that matter. When we saw a video about the life of shepherds and sheep in the hills surrounding Israel, they didn't cover anointing either! Leave it to me to think, "Hey! What about the anointing?" 

Sure enough, our perceptive leader answered my unasked question in the next session. She told us that the oil was used for several purposes. For one thing, it was a salve for any sores. Hmm, medicinal purposes...healing!  

OK, so this is a different kind of medicine altogether, but it's the best I could do. Someone was taking extraordinary care of these sheep is my point.

Oil was also used on the heads of the rams during mating season so that when they had their showdowns with each other their heads would glance off each other and they would be less likely to seriously wound each other. 

A third purpose, however, really intrigued me. The oil was smeared on the sheeps' noses as an insect and snake repellent. When they were feasting on the table lands, there were often adder holes in the grass. The shepherd also put oil around the hole openings he saw to keep the snakes from getting out, but even if one came to bite a sheep on the nose, it would slide off the oily surface first. There were also flies--referred to as "nose flies"--that would swarm around the sheeps' noses if they were unprotected, and even burrow and lay eggs in their nostrils. Obviously this was most annoying and quite a nuisance.

I thought about the things that annoy and "bug" me. There are some serious recurring themes, I must say.  The deepest burrowing goes on closest to home. I thought, AHA! An anointing is exactly what I need--something to make these nuisances slide off instead of festering. That made me smile, and since that lesson, I have found myself several times saying, Lord, anoint me so I can let this slide!  Amazingly, it helps!  

How perfectly this accompanies the challenge to accept the invitation to feast in the presence of my enemies.  With head anointed, I can focus on my Shepherd's abundant provision, allowing him to deal with the threats to my inner peace.