30 Days of Smell

Day 8: Filled with the fragrance

You know those stargazer lilies I wrote about on Day 7? Yesterday, I went around the house to see them, take a moment to intoxicate myself with their heavenly fragrance and to my dismay, they were toppled over! The weight of the flower heads was too much for the stalks to bear. I saw only two options: allow their petals to fall to the ground and wither or cut them and bring them inside. I chose the later.

I cut two large clumps and placed them in a vase in my sitting room—the room I look into when I come in the front door or see when I walk from the upstairs to the downstairs. I placed them their so that I could see their beauty. Little did I know, I would also become aware of their fragrance every time I walked by.

I’m amazed at how permeating their scent is to the entire entrance of our home. Each time I pass by, they remind me they are there by the lovely, sweet, light perfume they emit. I thought of a passage of Scripture I read just the other day. It takes place in the home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus during a dinner party in honor of Jesus. In the story, Mary took a twelve-ounce jar of expensive perfume, anointed Jesus’ feet with it and wiped his feet with her hair. Then John records, “The house was filled with the fragrance.”(John 12:3)

Filled with the fragrance. That’s what happens when we bring something fragrant into our home; it intensifies the scent because it is concentrated in the space of those walls. Though I had a hard time smelling the lilies’ perfume outside until I got close and stuck my nose in their blossoms, I had no trouble smelling them inside my home. My house was filled with their fragrance.

When we receive Christ, we receive his fragrance into our interior lives, permeating our being. We become filled with Christ’s Spirit, the scent of his nature permeating our true self. This image prompts me to open my heart and bring Christ deeper in so that his aroma is more concentrated within my very being. How does this experience speak to you?