I’ve been smelling a lot lately.

Oh my. That doesn’t sound good! Let me clarify.

I’ve been very focused on the scents and smells around me lately. We all talk about things or people that we’ve seen, and we talk about the yummy things we’ve eaten, but we don’t talk a lot about what we smell. Unless it’s a bad smell, of course, then you want to identify it and get rid of it.

For example, I took my granddaughters strawberry picking last week and fresh strawberries smell so so wonderful. We might drool when we see a juicy red strawberry but try giving them a sniff and they will taste even better. I pity the person who lacks a sense of smell and cannot enjoy food to its’ fullest. Here are my granddaughters smelling the berries they picked – I told them to take a big whiff, and I think they were surprised by what they smelled as they lingered there for quite a while.

The other day there was a fire at the Nelis Dutch Village – a local tourist place that focuses on the Dutch culture and includes an old Dutch barn that houses animals for their petting farm. The fire happened around midnight when no one was there. People at a nearby Planet Fitness thought they smelled smoke and the concern was that perhaps some of the tanning beds were getting hot – or even close to being on fire. Using their ‘sniffers’ the people were able to turn their noses to the source, and finally noticed the flames coming from the barn across the way. It wasn’t seeing the flames that first alerted them to the fire – it was the smell of smoke.

Today I went walking at my favorite place – Mt. Pisgah. See my post … path … to read more about Mt. Pisgah. I usually see and hear so much on my walks at Mt. Pisgah, but today I tried to focus on the SMELL. It was very hot today and we’ve had a bit of rain lately. It smelled hot, and humid, and green, and mossy, and steamy. It was very earthy. And it smelled like the woods and decaying trees, Here’s a picture of the steps today – you can see how damp and mossy things were.

So I wanted to see what the Bible had to say about smells!

In Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 2, verses 14-16 Paul writes: “But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life.” The message here is that as Christians, God can lead us as we spread the Gospel and tell others about Jesus. To those who are looking for a Savior, it is a sweet fragrance of hope and life. To those who reject Christ, it may lead to a not-so-sweet smelling life. But what a neat imagery of having God work through us so that people notice this sweet aroma of Christ’s love and compassion that they can have, too.

There are also several instances where the bible talks about the burning of incense – now there’s something to smell! But the early church did not burn incense because of its association with paganism. However, the Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox Church use incense as part of their worship to create an atmosphere that shows how our prayers are going up to God himself. Psalm 141 verse 2 even says: “May my prayer be set before you like incense.” Another neat imagery – of how our prayers drift heavenward to the ears of our heavenly Father.

I encourage you to be more smelly – haha! – to entertain your sense of smell and discover how powerful some scents are. And may you walk with Christ in a way that people don’t need to see a literal sign around your shoulders to know you are a Christian. Maybe they can catch a whiff of it in the way you act and speak.

just Laurel