The Aroma of Christ

 

My daddy smelled like strong coffee, cigarettes, and Coalgate Foamy shave cream. I loved to pat his soft cheeks and kiss him goodnight after he shaved at night. The memory of my daddy’s smell is still strong in my mind and my nose after all these years.

Have you ever noticed that your body picks up smells just from being around them? If you hang around a cigar smoker, you’ll smell like smoke. If you stand over the barbeque grill, cooking hamburgers, you begin to smell like hickory smoke. Have you ever picked up the telephone after someone with strong perfume has used it?

This is why children hug their mom’s nightgown to go to sleep at night when their mom is out of town and widows refuse to wash the flannel shirts their husbands always wore.

In the 1600’s in France, Brother Lawrence entered the monastery as a lay brother, where he was assigned to the kitchen. There he found God, not in the sanctuary in prayer, but amidst the pots and pans, going about his daily duties, speaking to God frequently and learning to hear God’s voice. His letters and writings kept by others of their conversations with him were compiled into a booklet The Practice of the Presence of God, still available as a Christian
 classic.

“Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.” Acts 4:13 KJV. Peter and John smelled like Jesus, too.

The best way to become like Jesus is to spend time with him every day, wherever you go, whatever you do. Whether you are washing dishes, changing dirty diapers, or serving hamburgers at the local cafe, you can be in the presence of Jesus until you begin to smell like Him. The more you hang around with Jesus, the more you will smell like Him, act like Him, talk like Him, walk like Him, do the things He did.

 
2 Corinthians 2:15 NRS says “For we are the aroma of Christ to God.”

 
 We smell just like Jesus to the Father God.