(Disclaimer: If you’re reading this while eating your morning cornflakes, you might want to set it aside and pick it up later when your tender sensibilities have had time to toughen up.)
I was recently pretty sure a herd of elephants had died in the woods surrounding our house, which was actually a happier thought than my secondary hypothesis – that a serial killer was hiding bodies in my yard.
Part of country living is an occasional whiff of some dead critter, but when I went for a walk recently, I was overwhelmed with a noxious odor that had me burying my face in the armpit of my t-shirt for the duration of my little hike.
Not only that, there were no less than 20 vultures hovering in the trees around me, obviously gathering for a little “table fellowship.” The buffet was on and I suspected it was no mere squirrel or possum. This was a big-league stink and my imagination ran wild with the hideous possibilities. When I returned from my walk, I immediately reported this dire situation to my husband, the fixer of almost everything.
He leapt from the couch and went to investigate (in such a rush that he forgot to don his superhero cape and tights), determined to locate the source of the odor.
When he returned, he reported the stink was coming from … ready for this? … rotting toadstools.
Toadstools? I thought not, unless they were some mutant variety from the pit of you-know-where. Certainly, the toadstools did smell rather unsavory, but we learned days later that the truly awful odor, sadly, was coming from a large dog that had been killed and dragged into the woods.
Why on earth am I writing about such a disgusting topic?
Because, believe it or not, there was a spiritual lesson to be gleaned from this unpleasantness. When I had returned from my walk, I was distressed that this awful smell was making it impossible to enjoy being outside around our house during my favorite season of the year. I thought I’d have to keep my windows closed and nose quarantined for weeks.
What’s the point of living in the woods if you can’t sit on your porch or ramble around outside?
A smell should not have such power over one’s life.
Because my recollection of Bible verses sometimes resembles a psychiatric free-association exercise, this whole thing reminded me of a Scripture — 2 Corinthians 2:15-16a, which says, “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.”
Figuratively speaking, followers of Jesus Christ smell funny. To some, we smell like “death”; to others, we’re the “fragrance of life.”
No Christian perfectly reflects the heart of God and our sins too often make the Gospel more offensive than it needs to be, but even if we could love and live perfectly, the way Jesus loved and lived, some folks would still think we stink. A godly life, even a very imperfect one, offends those who enjoy being ungodly.
By the same token, to those who are seeking God, the lives of Christ-followers, however imperfect, are the “fragrance of life,” a fragrance that others follow to Jesus.
That’s what happened to me. I “smelled” Jesus all over a friend in college and it led me straight to Him.
Never underestimate the power of a smell.