Gift of Myrrh
A Reflection
Its the Thought that Counts
Myrrh is a strange gift.
It was a costly spice, but it was primarily used for embalming the dead. Imagine the scene: Mary and Joseph are watching as gifts are presented to their child, and someone hands them embalming perfume. It's like showing up to a baby shower with a solid gold crib—expensive, impressive, and utterly impractical. Myrrh was the awkward gift at the end of the line that brings up death at a birthday. Death is uncomfortable. We all know it's coming, but none of us knows exactly what comes next. It feels final—heavy—like staring into a doorway you can't see through. So, naturally, myrrh feels like a misplaced gift on Christmas night. But myrrh carried a deeper message; one that the Magi had no idea they were delivering in a jar.
A Little One’s Legacy
In the ancient world, myrrh was often presented to kings. So when the Magi first traveled toward Herod's palace, the gift made perfect sense. You honored kings with fragrant oils that signaled dignity, power, and legacy. Think of the great rulers of history, such as the pharaohs of Egypt and the emperors of Rome. Their deaths weren't seen as mysterious endings, but as opportunities to be immortalized. Statues, tombs, pyramids, and monuments became their way of living forever.
That's what myrrh symbolized: What will your life leave behind? How will you be remembered? Herod built his legacy in stone—building the great Second Temple of Jerusalem, appointing the priesthood, and constructing incredible palaces and fortresses. But when the Magi offered myrrh to the Christ child in Bethlehem, they unknowingly honored a different kind of King.
This King, who was the true Temple, God dwelling among His people.
This King who would appoint disciples.
This King who would build not fortresses, but a Kingdom of transformed hearts.
This King whose legacy would outlive death itself. Myrrh pointed to a burial— but also to a resurrection.
Mystery of the Myrrh
Luke paints a picture of Jesus' birth.
"She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger…" (Luke 2:7)
Managers usually appear in nativity scenes as small wooden troughs. But in first-century Judea, mangers were carved from stone. They were small feeding troughs chiseled from rock. Jesus' crib was literally a stone cradle. As we've seen throughout Advent, nothing surrounding Jesus is ever random. Everything becomes prophecy. John tells us that wrapped in linen and laid in stone is how His life ended as well. John 19 says that after the crucifixion, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus took Jesus' body and prepared it for burial:
"Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes… Taking Jesus' body, they wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen…" (John 19:39–40)
Myrrh shows up again. Linen shows up again. Stone shows up again. Jesus began His earthly life swaddled in cloth and laid in a carved manger. Here at the end, he is wrapped in cloth and laid in a carved tomb. Yet—John slips in something easily overlooked:
"At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden." (John 19:41)
A garden, not a graveyard! Because what is buried in a garden isn't meant to stay dead. The myrrh offered at Jesus' birth foreshadowed the myrrh that touched His body in death. But myrrh didn't preserve Him. Those linen strips couldn't hold Him. The stone tomb couldn't keep Him. He broke out of all of it for us! His legacy isn't locked in a monument. His legacy is alive in us! Myrrh was the strangest gift on Christmas night until Easter morning revealed what it really meant.
Take with You
Despite its association with death, myrrh has always carried the scent of healing. Across centuries and cultures, it's been folded into medicines, salves, and rituals meant to mend the body. Even today, scientists continue to explore its potential in specific cancer treatments. Myrrh reveals a truth we often overlook: healing and death are not opposites—they are partners. One cannot rise without the other falling. Every cure signals the end of something harmful, the death of a virus, a wound, a way of living.
The same tension appears in the life of Jesus. Many focus solely on His death, yet His life was itself a gift poured out for our good. In His healing ministry, he opened the eyes of the blind, raised the dead, and cast out evil spirits. Wherever Jesus went, wholeness blossomed in places that had surrendered to darkness. With each healing came a kind of death—the end of a limiting belief, a destructive habit, a story someone had lived under for far too long. Christmas may feel like a strange moment to talk about resurrection, but resurrection is precisely what was born in Bethlehem.
The hymn O Come, O Come, Emmanuel captures this beautifully:
"O come, O Bright and Morning Star…
Dispel the shadows of the night
and turn our darkness into light. "
These lines echo the heartbeat of the Christmas story: Light entering a dark world, not to condemn it, but to restore it. The death of darkness began the moment Christ arrived—and it reached its climax at the empty tomb on Easter morning. As the angels sang over that manger, they weren't just announcing a birth. They were announcing healing—healing that would come through His life, His love, and yes, His death that "makes peace between all things" (Col. 1:19-20).
Do you need healing in your life? What dark corners of your life need the dawning light of resurrection? The same light that stepped into Bethlehem still steps into our shadows today.
Luke 2. (n.d.). In Holy Bible: New International Version.
John 19. (n.d.). In Holy Bible: New International Version.
Neale, John. O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. John M. Neale, 1851, hymnary.org/text/o_come_o_come_emmanuel_and_ransom. Accessed 23 Nov. 2025.
Business Insider India. “Why Frankincense and Myrrh Are so Expensive.” YouTube, Business Insider India, 18 Dec. 2020, www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA6UZe5ioeY. Accessed 21 Nov. 2025.
Natural History Museum. “What Is Myrrh? | Surprising Science.” YouTube, Natural History Museum, 21 Dec. 2021, www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWnYm2WtX7g. Accessed 21 Nov. 2025.
