Have you ever gone to the store hungry and bought everything in sight? I have been really hungry spiritually; so hungry that I have been consuming scripture for hours. The pain of my present time causes me to need even a deeper sense of God's Presence and promise. God’s scent lingers on me when I get in His Presence. I like that and so do those around me.
I love scents; in fact, I make my own oil-based scents. I am sorta famous for my scents, lavender and lemon verbena; lavender and rose; cinnamon spice; new to my signatures scents is clementine-orange. However, I am most noted for lemon. Once while attending a friend’s grandmother’s funeral, someone blurted out the question, “do you smell lemon?” I shyly admitted “ that would be me.” Some people might find it frustrating to be smelt before being seen, but it is actually quite Biblical. Paul says that we are a fragrance: “Now thanks be to God who always lead us in triumph in Christ and through us diffuses the fragrance of is knowledge in every place. For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing” ( 2 Corinthians 2:14-15).
Smells can evoke memories- some of comfort or pain. Anger and depression don’t smell good on me. In fact, “A good name is better than precious ointment, and the day of death than the day of birth” (Ecclesiastes 7:1).
God takes the issue of creating fragrance so strongly that he commands, “Whoever compounds any like it or whoever puts any of it on an outsider shall be cut off from his people’” (exodus 33:3). God does not place His scent on just anyone. He gives specific instructions to Moses, “Take sweet spices, stacte, and onycha, and galbanum, sweet spices with pure frankincense (of each shall there be an equal part), and make an incense blended as by the perfumer, seasoned with salt, pure and holy. You shall beat some of it very small, and put part of it before the testimony in the tent of meeting where I shall meet with you. It shall be most holy for you. And the incense that you shall make according to its composition, you shall not make for yourselves. It shall be for you holy to the Lord." (Exodus 30:34-37). God loves to smell me before He sees me, so to speak. I hope I smell like Jesus, full of his sweet fragrance of myrrh, representing my death to self.
My praise and exhortation should be holy and affect everything and everyone with that purity: "And you shall make of these a sacred anointing oil blended as by the perfumer; it shall be a holy anointing oil. With it you shall anoint the tent of meeting and the ark of the testimony, and the table and all its utensils, and the lampstand and its utensils, and the altar of incense, and the altar of burnt offering with all its utensils and the basin and its stand. You shall consecrate them, that they may be most holy. Whatever touches them will become holy " (Exodus 30:25-30). Does sweet and brackish water flow from the same fountain? Note to self: it shouldn't.
I pray that my praise will be pleasing and extravagant like Mary who "took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume" (John 12:3).
The oils described in scripture are pure, not synthetic. Unrefined, sometimes, they actually burn in their pure state. I have burnt myself withstrong oils like cinnamon and eucalyptus. They have a medicinal quality. Lemon certainly is astringent- a good cleanser. What scent rafts from your spirit. Something citrus, salty, and sweet or something putrid like garbage?
Purely His,
M.J.
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