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J.I. Rodale was the founder and publisher of Prevention magazine, which promotes disease prevention rather than trying to cure it after it occurs. He was a health enthusiast and promoted organic gardening. He urged people to eat whole grains and unrefined sweets, to avoid nicotine and caffeine and fatty foods. He once said, “I’m going to live to be 100, unless I’m run down by some sugar-crazed taxi driver.”

On June 8, 1971, at the age of 72, Rodale was a guest on the Dick Cavett show. He attended an early evening taping for the late night broadcast. During his interview, Rodale said that he had “never felt better in his life!” and made quips like “I’m in such good health that I fell down a long flight of stairs yesterday and I laughed all the way” and “I’ve decided to live to be a hundred”.

After his interview, Rodale remained onstage and was seated on a couch beside the next guest. Rodale suddenly made a “snoring sound” and slumped over. Cavett initially believed that he was feigning disinterest for comedic effect. But that was not the case. He had suffered a fatal heart attack. That episode never aired. Fifty years ago people understood that to be the right thing to do. If it happened today, it would be available for download and viewing almost immediately.

Psalm 90:12 Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.

There is nothing wrong with trying to take care of the body God has given you. That is part of being a good steward of what God has entrusted to your care. But if you are putting all your eggs in that basket, you are missing the point. This world will not last forever, and your time here is limited. Cheryl and I have been starkly reminded of this in the last six weeks with the death of six of our family and friends. Some of had over 30,000 days, some just over 20,000, one less than 12,000 and one less than 400. Our days here on earth are numbered.

1 Corinthians 15:19 If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.

Our hope in Christ reminds that there is something more. Our days here are numbered, but Jesus came to fulfill the promise God made immediately after sin entered this world, that He would provide a rescue for us to escape what our sins earned us. Jesus came and took the punishment our sins deserved. He earned our forgiveness with His death. He opened heaven by rising again on the third day. That victory belongs to all who put their faith and confidence in Him. We trust Him and cling to His promise of entering life in His presence which has no end, where we will not need to be concerned with numbering our days.

1 Thessalonians 4:13–18 Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord’s own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage each other with these words.

How often to we act like silly chicks, running away, while the mother hen, who knows better, is trying to gather us? Jesus speaks of us that way.

Luke 13:34 “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!  

Jesus has called us to Himself with the message of free forgiveness because of what He did in our place. He calls us to believe in Him that we might have life and have it to the full. He seeks to gather us into a protected environment. It is an environment where we strive to live according to His laws and decrees because we know that He has already given us pardon and peace. He has freed us from sin and death by taking our place on the cross, dying to pay for our sins, and rising again to assure us of life everlasting.

Some refuse to be gathered. Even though God wants all men to be saved, and offers it freely to any and everyone, some will not be gathered. He invites them to believe, leads them to see His goodness and mercy, but they refuse. Unless they are gathered in before they die, nothing awaits them other than eternal torment in Hell.

Others have been gathered into this safe haven, His Church. They have heard the Good News and know what God has done, yet at times they want to turn their back on it, going astray, refusing to admit their sins so that they can receive the forgiveness that God offers so freely in Jesus Christ.

God provides protection. Some won’t enter, others who are in it want out. Perhaps it is because they feel too constrained. They want to get out from under what they feel is too restrictive an environment. Why did God have to give us rules that outlaw so many things? Is it really all that bad to break a commandment. Doesn’t it seem like God takes all the fun out of things? If only we were FREE. But what is that freedom? In the 1960’s Janis Joplin had a song that proclaimed: “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” That is where you find yourself when you refuse to be gathered. You find yourself in the midst of the immoral and anti-Christians forces of our society with nothing to protect you.

Would you rather be unprotected in this world or under the wings of your Mother Hen? When you are safe under the wings of Jesus, you have a different kind of freedom. You have freedom from all sins that would condemn us and separate us from Christ, freedom from worldly concerns. You discover that what you thought would be fun, those things God tells you not to do, aren’t worth the pain and suffering and heartbreak they bring into your life. It makes sense to obey God, the one who loved you enough to buy you back from sin. The things He tells you not to avoid are not worth running out from under the protection of His wings. Paul realized this and wrote about it this way:

I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, no having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ.  Phil 3:8-9

Lightning struck a hen house and it burst into flames. The volunteer fire department could not save it, and it burned to the ground. As the farmer poked through the ashes, he found the charred carcass of a hen. Underneath the blackened carcass were six chicks who had survived the fire. The mother hen had gathered her chicks under her wings. She had died so they might live. And that is exactly what Jesus, your Mother Hen, did for you. He put himself in harm’s way for your sake. He paid the price of His life in exchange for yours. Then He rose again in victory, and He is still that Mother Hen that wants to gather you in, offering you the protection that comes only from being with Him.

Luke 13:31-35 At that time some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, “Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you.” He replied, “Go tell that fox, `I will drive out demons and heal people today and tomorrow, and on the third day I will reach my goal.’ In any case, I must keep going today and tomorrow and the next day– for surely no prophet can die outside Jerusalem! “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!  Look, your house is left to you desolate. I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, `Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'”

At the end of my first year of and for all of my second year at seminary in St. Louis, Cheryl taught school in a town 45 miles east of there: Worden, Illinois. She taught Kindergarten through 4th grade in a two-room school at Trinity Lutheran Church. All things considered, it made more sense for us to live in that town of 900 and have me commute back and forth to St. Louis than the other way around. Not long after she started teaching, their pastor took a call and left. I was asked to help them out, which I was more than happy to do. I preached almost every Sunday that summer and twice a month during the school year. I also made hospital calls and home visits. Since that was a farming community, and I was a city boy, I really enjoyed going out to visit people on their farms, and they seemed happy to show me around.

One dear widowed lady, Erna Knackstedt, raised chickens. She showed me around her barns with the thousands of chirping, seemingly helpless chicks. And I saw how a mother hen reacts when any perceived threat enters her space. She squawks and puts up a commotion and runs around frantically. It’s a little unsettling when you first see it, even though it may not scare you away. After all, it is just a chicken, and how threatening can a chicken be? But that is not the point. As that mother hen is putting on that scene, all the time she has her wings spread out, herding her chicks out of harm’s way and to safety. She wants to protect her chicks.

I watched a young father trying to do some grocery shopping with three boys, about 3 and 5 and a baby in a car seat. The older two kept trying to wander away. I felt sorry for the guy, knowing what it is like to have more kids than hands. He was trying to herd them along, keeping them close as they made their way through the store. Of course, those boys weren’t willing to herded. They had their own ideas of where they wanted to go, exploring and picking up things and playing games. At one point I heard the father say something we’ve all said: “Stay close to me — I don’t want anything to happen to you!” We want to be protective, but children aren’t always willing.

Jesus is concerned about little helpless ones. In the passage above, he speaks of how He wants to gather up “Jerusalem,” referring to all of God’s chosen people, the descendants of Abraham, the Jews. Time after time God had sent prophets to call them to repentance, yet they would not listen. And now God’s Son Himself is on the scene to bring the promised salvation to the Children of Israel. He wants to lead them to safety. He wants to protect them. But they are not willing.

Jesus is still our mother hen, wanting to gather up His followers and keep them safe. It may sound strange to hear God spoken of in feminine terms, since for the most part God has revealed Himself in the masculine. However, there are other instances of this imagery in the Scriptures. In order to reveal part of His more tender side, God said through Isaiah: “As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; and you will be comforted …” (Isaiah 66:13) So it is not all that unusual that He uses the image of how fiercely protective a mother can be to describe the way He wants to protect the ones He loves, the ones for whom He came to suffer, die and rise again.

I’ll have more thoughts on this tomorrow.

Many churches use lectionaries, a set series of readings for every Sunday in the Church Year. These get revised from time to time, and some denominations make adjustments to these. But in many cases, congregations that follow a lectionary are hearing the same Bible passages read in their worship services across denominational lines. That means Christians are hearing the same message from God’s Word and contemplating it together.

For the most part in my ministry I used a three-year lectionary, which meant there were different Bible lessons read every week for three years before they started being repeated. The Old Testament Lesson for the Fifth Sunday in Lent in the second year of that lectionary, which is also the Old Testament Lesson assigned to Reformation Day, is Jeremiah 31:31-34.  It speaks of God’s New Covenant, fulfilled in the coming of Jesus to live without sin and offer His perfection as payment for our sins. That is why God will, for those who put their faith in Jesus, “forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” That teaching was restored to the Church through the Reformation, so this was and is an appropriate reading for that celebration.

But this reading is also a good fit for the season of Lent. Our focus during this penitential season is to remember that it was our sin and disobedience that demanded the awful payment that Jesus willingly made for us and the whole world.

Jeremiah 31:31–34 “The time is coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the Lord. “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,” declares the Lord. “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.  No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest,” declares the Lord. “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

When God speaks of His people here, He says His law will be in our hearts and minds. That only happens when we spend time in His Word. We can’t meditate on it if we don’t read it and know it. And we dare not assume that we have reached the point where “they will all know me, from the least to the greatest,” as though there were no need for us to tell others about our Savior. The world does not know the Lord and His goodness and mercy. That is why panic and evil are so widespread all around us.

You and I know better. We have seen the love of God in the face of Jesus. We are confident of forgiveness, life and everlasting salvation, not because we have tried hard or done well, but all for Jesus’ sake. It is God’s covenant with us, based on what He has done for us. Live with that confidence.

Psalm 34:18–19 The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. A righteous man may have many troubles, but the LORD delivers him from them all.

 Two days ago I received a call informing me that my niece had overdosed and died. She had been battling an addiction to heroin for a long time. Last year she had cleaned up, conceived and gave birth to a beautiful little girl, and seemed to be doing well. But a few weeks ago she started using again, and now that struggle is over.

The last time I saw her was in August. We had a celebration for my mother’s 90^th birthday and included a baby shower for her as part of that celebration. I hugged her and told her I loved her and was proud of her and reminded her that Jesus loved her, too.

I was present when God claimed her as His dearly loved child in the Sacrament of Baptism, putting His name on her and washing away her sin. I was there when she confirmed her faith in Jesus as her Savior through the rite of Confirmation. She was taught about God’s love for her in Christ, and professed her faith in Him. In spite of the poor choices she made – like we all do in life – my hope is that she still had that faith in Jesus. What He did for us through His life, death and resurrection gives us the certainty of forgiveness and life everlasting, no matter how great our sin. All we have to do is believe.

I ask that you join me in praying for her parents, Steve and Tricia, her brother Josh, her daughter, Isabella, her boyfriend Christian, and all the family that grieves.

Luke 10:38-42 As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him.  She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!” “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”

Mary chose what was better. Martha was doing something good, but not what was best at that time. We see it so clearly in this story, but have a hard time seeing it in ourselves. Inside each of us live both Mary and Martha. They both have their time and place. But we tend to let Martha take center stage more often. I think Martha is a vivid example of modern Christians trying to juggle all their obligations to God, family, friends, work, and others. We tend to follow the example of Martha, even though Jesus told us and we know that Mary chose what was better!

We need to do what Mary did. We need to take time to spend time with Jesus. We need to take time to listen to Jesus. How do you spend your “free time?” It is so easy to say we are too busy to spend quiet time with Jesus, but are you? Or is it simply a matter of how you choose to spend your time. Part of the problem is that we have too many options to choose from. Every day you encounter distractions from taking time with Jesus. These distractions come to you in things that sound like good ideas. Cell phones, Television, sporting events, movies, school activities and a host of other things vie for your attention. They don’t appear in the form of pitchfork and horns and a tail. Sometimes the distractions are a waste of time. Other times even good and worthwhile things can distract us from doing what is better, or what is best. Jesus tells us the best thing is to take time to listen to His words, like Mary did.

Martha had a sense of “rightness.” She was doing what she knew to be the right thing. She was thinking, “how dare Mary sit there while I do all the work!” We can all get that same sense of rightness in our lives, convinced that we are doing the right thing. You need to be careful when you judge. There was a woman who had some time to kill in a busy airport. She bought a cup of coffee and a small package of cookies, then staggered to an unoccupied table. She was reading the morning paper when she became aware of cellophane rustling at her table. She looked over the top of her paper and was shocked at what she saw. A nicely dressed young man was helping himself to one of her cookies. She was angry, but didn’t want to make a scene, so she leaned across and took a cookie for herself. A minute or two passed. More rustling. He helped himself to another cookie. By the time they were down to the last one, she was fuming, but couldn’t bring herself to say anything. The young man picked up the last cookie, broke it in two, pushed half across the table to her, ate the other half, and left. A little while later, the public address system called for her flight. She was still angry as she dug through her purse looking for her boarding pass. Imagine her embarrassment when she opened her handbag and saw her package of cookies. She had been eating his! She had been convinced she was right, but was very wrong! So it was with Martha. She was sure she was doing the right thing. And what she was doing was good. But what Mary was doing was better!

Those operating from a Martha mentality can get caught up in the thinking that what they do finishes what Jesus did. Don’t be mistaken. Your acts of righteousness and obedience do contribute to being a Christian, but they do not contribute to being saved. Jesus did all that. When He said, “It is finished” it was. We simply receive what He has already done. And the best thing to do in response to this is take time to listen to Him. You need that. You need to hear that your sins are forgiven for Jesus’ sake. You need to hear that His death was the payment for your sins. You need to be reminded that His resurrection is your victory over death and the grave. You miss out on those things when you don’t take time to be with Jesus.

When you take time to spend time with Jesus, you are in good company. You are in God’s company. Works of service are good and appropriate and have their place in our lives. But taking advantage of the opportunity to listen to the Lord himself speak to you is even better.

“We’ve always done it that way!” The U.S. standard rail gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet 8.5 inches. Exactly. That is an odd number. Why is that gauge used? Because that’s the way they built them in England, and Englishmen built the U.S. railroads. But why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that was the gauge they used.  Why did “they” use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that same wheel spacing. So why did the wagons have that odd wheel spacing? If they tried using any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England, because that was the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old, rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England) for their legions. Many of those original roads have been used ever since the Roman Empire. And the ruts in those roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. So the U.S. standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Oh, by the way, the reason the Roman chariots were made that wide was so that they would be just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses. So I guess you could say that a couple of horse’s rear ends established the U.S. standard rail gauge.

But let’s take it a step further. Remember the Space Shuttle sitting on a launch pad with  two big rocket boosters attached to the sides of the main fuel tank? Those solid rocket boosters were made in a factory in Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs wanted to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The rail lines from the factory run through tunnels, so the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel, the size of which is based upon the railroad track, which as you know is about as wide as two horses’ behinds. So a major design feature of the space shuttle, perhaps the most advanced transportation system in the world, was determined over 2000 years ago by the width of two horse’s rear…because we’ve always done it that way!

Of course, whenever anyone says “we’ve always done it that way” they are mistaken. Everything was new at some point. But when we become accustomed to something, we assume that is the way it has always been done and therefore is the way it should always be done. That can be a very dangerous assumption. For example, we settle into a routine and become comfortable being served rather than being the ones who are serving others for Jesus. When that happens, change is necessary. Change is not something most of you are comfortable with, that is unless it was your idea to make the change. We don’t like it when change is forced upon us. We like it when things go along as usual or the way we have planned them.

2 Corinthians 5:14–21 For Christ’s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again. So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Paul affirms that God did everything required for people to be reconciled to Himself. God sent His Son. God paid the price for sins. Jesus died for all. We know and believe that, and so we are to live for Him. The charge we have been given is not to bring people to church. It is to take Jesus to the people, everywhere we encounter them.

Being the horse’s rear ends that we are, we would like to stay in the same rut of our sins forever. But God saw to it that we could break free. Not on our own, mind you. He would break us free. He would be the agent of change. He provided the cure for sin over 2000 years ago when Jesus went to that cross, bearing the sin of all people so that everyone who believes in Him would not have to die eternally, they would not have to go to hell, but could have forgiveness and life everlasting.

God has called you to be agents of change for him in this world. We all have people in our lives who are not living out their calling as children of God. We all know people who have fallen away from living as a disciple of Jesus. And we all know people who do not believe in Jesus as their Lord and Savior. We need to take the love and mercy and grace we rejoice in to the part of the world we live in each day. God wants you to be the one who takes His love, His message, His redemption, His reconciliation to the people in your sphere of influence, the people you already know. You are Christ’s ambassador.

(The information about the rail gauge and booster rockets was taken from a column by Stephen Henry, Publisher of the Levelland News-Press)

Cheryl and I visited the Coca Cola museum in Atlanta. At the end of the tour there is a tasting room where you can sample over sixty different sodas that Coke makes and sells around the world. There was one from Africa that I started to taste, but as soon as I held the sample cup up to my lips, the smell convinced me that I did not really want to try that one after all.

Smells can be a warning. When you are driving your car and you notice a funny, burning smell coming from the Air Conditioner vents, that is a signal to pull over and see what is wrong. Or maybe you’ve had something like this happen at your house: Cheryl will take something out of the frig, open it, smell it, and if she thinks it doesn’t smell quite right, that it might have something wrong with it, she gives it to me and says, “Here, taste this!”

Sometimes we use smell to describe things. I remember when Bethany was playing basketball in 8^th grade. They played their main rival and lost badly. I was not at the game because of a meeting at Church, but I picked her up afterwards. We were taking another girl home, too. The girls were talking about how badly they played and Bethany said, “we stunk up the place.” While they didn’t smell too good at the time, they weren’t talking about literal odor. In that context, it is describing something in less than flattering terms. And their play that night did stink.

Yesterday I shared this passage that speaks of us “smelling good for God.”

2 Corinthians 2:14-16 But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him.  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. And who is equal to such a task?

When you strive to be the aroma of Christ, some will like it, others will not. It’s kind of like incense. Some people love the way it smells. Others hate it. Those who know of Christ and share our belief in Him as the Way, the Truth and the Life will receive us as the fragrance of life. But to those without faith, those outside the body of believers, Paul says our Christian life will be to them the smell of death.

Do you know the smell of death? It is foul, offensive and unmistakable. That is what the people were warning Jesus about when He told them to open up the tomb of Lazarus. He had been in there four days. The odor would be extremely foul (John 11:38-39). But Jesus changed death to life, eliminating the stench. Those who put their confidence in Him get this.

To those perishing, this aroma of Christ, this fragrance of life, will remind them they are doomed, helpless and hopeless without the confidence we have in Christ Jesus. They have hope only for this life. Our fragrant life of obedience to Christ says there is more than just this life, and it raises in their nostrils the stench of their own death. Those who live without Christ are spiritually dead and the stink of their own corruption will be strong. However, they have been in it so long they are accustomed to it. Only when a breath of fresh air or a pleasing aroma comes around are they reminded of their own malodorous surroundings.

Hopefully, they will want to be made clean and get rid of the stink. Cleansing is available. A real washing can be had in Baptism, washing away both sins and the stench of death. We are made clean, fresh, and new by God. That doesn’t mean we will never again do anything that stinks. We will. But all those sins were taken care of when Jesus died. Our repentance and confession assures us of forgiveness and refreshes us.

As those who follow Jesus, those who try to be a pleasing aroma in response to the forgiveness and new life he has given us, as those who have passed from death to life, we want the same for others. We want the aroma of Christ to be an attraction for them, we want them to hear the Word, believe the promises, take to heart the Good News so that what Jesus said of us can also be said of them:

I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life. John 5:24

Are you up to being a pleasing aroma for the Lord? Who can smell good and right before God? No one. None of us, unless we have help. And we do. The Holy Spirit enables us to be a fragrance of life. The Holy Spirit empowers us to be the aroma of Christ. He has brought us to faith, assured us of forgiveness and life and salvation for Jesus’ sake, and he then makes it possible for us to live a life in response to the good news, the life that surrounds us with the fragrance of the knowledge of Christ so others will get a whiff of it. What’s that smell? It is the aroma of Christ. Take it with you. Let it emanate from you.

About 6 years after Hurricane Katrina hit new New Orleans, twenty folks from my congregation went down there to help with the ongoing rebuilding. About half of those were in our Youth Group. It was a good trip. We worked hard and hopefully did some good. The guys all stayed in the same building, which was a shipping container that had been converted into a bunk house. One morning before we went to our job site, one of the boys thought it would be a good idea to place his dirty, sweaty, stinky socks over the air conditioner to dry out during the day. To say he stunk the place up would be a gross understatement. Thankfully, one of the guys had a bottle of Febreeze that he had used in the van—he’s traveled with teenagers before—and used that to mask the foul odor.

The sense of smell has a big impact on us, how we feel, our demeanor. It is just one of our senses, but it is a powerful and interesting one. The aroma of fresh baking is pleasant. The stench of rubber burning is not. The tone used to say “What’s that Smell?” clearly identifies whether one thinks it to be a pleasing smell or not. And the terminology used tells us the difference as well: aroma, fragrance, scent and bouquet are vastly different than odor, stench, stink and reek.

The importance of the sense of smell in our lives is evidenced by the number of products there are in our culture designed to enhance or mask or eliminate or cover up smells:

• body products such as perfume and deodorant and soap
• household air fresheners
• Fabric softeners and dryer sheets with all their fragrances
• Fresh smelling kitty litter
• automotive scent strips that hang from rear view mirror.
• even something you can put in your shoes to reduce foot odor.

When God speaks to us and communicates with us, He knows that we are sensual beings. He tries to communicate with us on our level, using things that affect our senses, things that we can relate to and understand.

2 Corinthians 2:14-16 But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads everywhere the fragrance of the knowledge of him. 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. And who is equal to such a task?

You and I are to be the fragrance of the knowledge of Christ, the aroma of Christ, to the world around us. Notice those are terms that describe a positive smell. God doesn’t want us to stink up the place. The aroma of Christ and the fragrance of life are the smell of something good. We are to diffuse around us a sweet perfume that permeates our surroundings. We do that when we are living the new life to which we have been called. We are the fragrance of life when we live each day in the confidence that comes from knowing that we have the forgiveness of sins because of what God has done for us in Christ Jesus. We “smell good for God” when we take to heart the knowledge of Christ as our Savior and believe the promise of life everlasting for His sake. Our actions reflect our faith.

Do you “smell good for God?”  I’ll share more on this tomorrow.