Finding Holy Ground: Smell

In our exploration of finding Holy Ground through our 5 senses, we’ve come to the sense of smell. We started this series the beginning of September and have looked at finding Holy Ground in sight, hearing, and tasting.

There are a lot of odors in the world. Some are lovely, like a rose. Others make us grimace, like the smell of a skunk or garbage. Sometimes when you walk or drive past a restaurant you can smell the burgers or spicy food or cakes that are being prepared. The smell invites you to come in and try something. Smell can also repel us if we get too close to someone who hasn’t had a bath in a long time or who has bad breath.

Depending on where you live, sitting outside and inhaling the scents in the air can be refreshing or not. If you have fragrant flowers in your yard, you’ll experience their lovely smell. There is a cereal factory in my city and we always hope they are baking when we drive past because it’s such a yummy and delicious smell. Living near a chemical factory or freeway will bring you different odors when you breathe deeply. When we have forest fires nearby, you can smell the acrid odor that even leaves a taste in your mouth.

We all know what it means when someone says, ‘he’s a stinker’. It’s not that the person physically smells. Rather it’s his actions that are unsavory. Or someone can ‘come out smelling like a rose’. Again, it’s not the physical, but the moral aroma that is referred to.

The Old Testament has many references to the sweet smell of sacrifice, and how that pleases God. In the New Testament, we are encouraged to “and walk in love, just as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us as a fragrant sacrificial offering to God.” (Ephesians 5:2) In Second Corinthians the people of God are compared to that beautiful scent. Paul says, “thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads in every place the fragrance that comes from knowing him. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to the one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life.” (2 Corinthians 2:14-16)

Saint Paul tells us we are supposed to be a ‘fragrant sacrificial offering to God’ in all that we do. We are called to be the ‘fragrance from life to life’. We are to live so that our lives provide good ‘smells’ to one another. Perhaps Paul was thinking about the difference between walking past an oven baking bread, and walking past the local refuse pile. The bread is good for food and life. The dump is full of decaying things. How can our lives be like the sweet smell of something delicious? In what way are you and I the ‘aroma of God’? We do this by ‘knowing him’ and letting our lives point to God instead of ourselves. Matt Redman’s song Heart of Worship is an offering of self to God’s service.

When the music fades
All is stripped away
And I simply come

Longin' just to bring
Something that's of worth
That will bless your heart

I'll bring You more than a song
For a song in itself
Is not what You have required

You search much deeper within
Through the ways things appear
You're looking into my heart

I'm comin' back to the heart of worship
And it's all about You
It's all about You, Jesu

As Redman says, “It’s all about You…Jesus”. That is where we find Holy Ground in being a fragrant offering to one another.