Sometimes I walk out the door at work and step back into my childhood.
Let me explain. I suspect that it has something to do with the trees in the yards around my workplace or the aroma of a nearly century-old building, but when I step outside it smells like my schoolyard at good old Lincoln Elementary. When I smell that smell, I am a kid again.
Fragrance is powerful aid to memory. Certain aromas can propel you back to different times in your life. For example, when I was a young child, we drove to church past a tire factory. Now, whenever I smell burning rubber, I’m instantly propelled back to sitting in the back seat of my parents’ car in my church clothes.
The smell of diesel fuel exhaust takes me back to Dade City, Florida. We moved there when I was 13 years old. The first time I smelled diesel fuel exhaust was from buses at Pasco Jr. High. I had always walked to school before. Now I lived in the country and bus-riding became a part of my life.
Did you know that our actions can be perceived as a fragrance? Have you ever heard misbehaving children referred to as “little stinkers” or they have been described as rotten? How about persons who are nasty and use terrible language? They’re called foul. Sounds like a bad fragrance to me!
The Word says we can be a pleasing aroma, or a dreadful smell of decay:
"But thank God! He has made us his captives and continues to lead us along in Christ’s triumphal procession. Now he uses us to spread the knowledge of Christ everywhere, like a sweet perfume. Our lives are a Christ-like fragrance rising up to God. But this fragrance is perceived differently by those who are being saved and by those who are perishing. To those who are perishing, we are a dreadful smell of death and doom. But to those who are being saved, we are a life-giving perfume. And who is adequate for such a task as this?" (2 Corinthians 2:14-16)
May our fragrance be a good smell, a life-giving smell! How can we do this? By acting like Christ would everywhere we go, at our jobs, in the marketplace and especially in the home.
If you act like a stinker at home with your family, just because you can get away with it, eventually you’ll smell like death to them.
If you can’t be Christ-like with those around you, your religion is dead.
And dead things stink.
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Thanks for dropping by the Journey! I want to always share my post,
A Ticket Home, for those who might not know the way Home.
Jerralea, thank you for sharing this beautiful invitation to be a sweet aroma for Christ. May our presence show His presence in a world gone mad. May His peace be evident in all we say and do.
Bless you.
Amen, Linda! That is my prayer as well. May the world see Jesus in us!
This tickles me, Jerralea, how fragrance or better, “odors” impact our thoughts! I went to High School in the middle of pig farms, need I say more about that? But great analogy for our faith and the odor we leave behind for others. May it indeed be a sweet aroma of Christ.
Amen, Donna! That is my prayer as well. Thanks for coming!