It’s hard to make everyone happy.
After all, people have competing interests and so doing something that makes one person happy is bound to displease someone else. Sometimes it feels like we can’t do anything that people find worthy of commendation. All our work, all our efforts, seem to be disdained.
It’s not an unique situation. I imagine this is how the woman who anointed Jesus in Mark 14 must have felt. She gives an extravagant and sacrificial gift that is representative of her faith in Christ, and is immediately reprimanded by those who were closest to Him. She tries to honor Him, and is treated with condemnation. She is greeted by accusations, when she strives to give Him acclaim.
Except from Him.
Others ridiculed her gift, He exalted it. What others saw as a problem, He praised. Yet so often, it’s the problems from the many, and not the praise of the One, that dictates the decisions we make.
Like the woman in Mark though, the exhortation of our Savior must be louder in our ears than the berating of our friends. His commendation, not the acceptance of the crowd, must be our aim. And in doing so, maybe our actions, like hers, will be representative of the Gospel and of the One who came to save.