No:  it meant this—­that the Son of God was now actually going to act as Son of God to meet her need.  Under His touch her dead brother was going to live.  The deadness that broke her heart would give way under Jesus’ touch.  The Bethany faith doesn’t believe that God can do what you need, merely.  It believes that He will do it And so the stone’s taken away that He may do it.  God has our active consent.  Are we up on the Bethany level?  Has God our active consent to do all He would?  Is our faith being lived, acted out?

And the feast of grateful tribute that followed has an exquisite added touch.  The faith that lets God into one’s life to meet its needs gets clearer eyesight.  Acted faith affects the spirit vision.  There is a spirit sensitiveness that recognizes God and discerns how things will turn out.

Notice Jesus’ words about Mary’s act of anointing.  There is a singularly significant phrase in it.  “Let her keep it against (or in view of) the day of My burying.”  “Keep it” is the striking phrase.  What does that mean?  We speak of keeping a day, as Christmas, meaning to hallow the memories for which it stands.  “Keep it” here seems to mean that.  Let her keep a memorial.  Yet it would be a memorial in advance of the event remembered and hallowed.

It seems to suggest that Mary thus discerned the outcome for Jesus of the coming crisis, and more, its great significance.  The disciples expected Jesus’ power to overcome all opposition.  She alone sensed what was coming, His death and its tremendous spirit-meaning.  And it is possible that the raising of her brother helped her to sense ahead another raising.  For there is no mention of her at the tomb, as would otherwise have been most natural.

Her simple love-lit faith could see, and could see beyond to the final outcome.  This is the story of the Bethany faith, faith at flood.  This highest simplest truest faith, that had come in answer to Jesus’ patient persistent wooing for it, opens the way for the greatest use of His power on record.

There’s one story more in this true-blue faith list.  It is the story of the Greeks.  At first it seems not to belong in here.  There is no mention made of the faith of these men nor of their acceptance of Jesus.  But the more you think into it the more it seems that here is its true place, and that this is why John brings it in, not simply to show how the outside world was reaching for Jesus, but to show the inner spirit of these men towards Jesus.

Whether the term Greeks is used in the looser sense for the Greek-speaking Jews,[70] or for non-Jewish foreigners, or, as I think most likely, in the meaning of men of Grecian blood, residents of Greece, the significance is practically the same, it was the outer world coming to Jesus.  These had come a long journey to do homage to the true God at Jerusalem.  Their presence reveals their spirit.