A Sweet Fragrance

For some reason, God has given me an acute sense of smell.  Sometimes it’s a blessing, and sometimes it’s not.  If I’m driving down a highway, I can smell the odor of a skunk long before anyone else can.  If my wife has a question about the freshness of something in the refrigerator, she can count on me to take a whiff and decide if it’s good or bad.  It can be an annoyance when I innocently make a comment on an odor that nobody else can smell.  I’m learning to keep those comments to myself.

I remember springtime in Pensacola, Florida during my freshman year of college.  There was a road that was lined with honeysuckle where I loved to drive my VW with the windows down.  The fragrance was sweet, and it reminded me of home.  And then there was a fragrance called Sweet Honesty that I absolutely loved.  I think every girl on campus wore it at the time.  When I started dating Cheri, she wore it just for me because she knew I liked it.  And then was the smell of the eucalyptus trees in California that wafted through the air as we drove from San Francisco to Muir Woods.  All of these fragrances are permanently embedded in my memory, and remind me of great times and beautiful places.

I was reading in II Corinthians 2, and verses 14-16 made an impression on me.  It reads “But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing ….”  The aroma of Christ is pleasing to God.  It’s like an aroma that drifts through the air around us, just like Sweet Honesty, honeysuckle, or eucalyptus.  God will use you to spread the fragrance of Christ to the world.  Wear it boldly!