Honeysuckle and Skunk Juice

The power of smell is amazing and for someone like me who is very sensitive to smell it brings a whole new dynamic to life.  Smell has the power to excite your appetite, turn your stomach, awaken your desires, and even flood your mind with memories. 

For as long as I can remember my Grandma has worn the same perfume; I want to say it’s like Stetson for women or something like that.  To this day any time I smell that perfume anywhere I am instantly transported back to times filled with fishing, pancake eating, playing in the sand, and late nights watching CSI (which I wasn’t allowed to watch at home but at Grandma’s house anything goes). 

When I was little my dad worked at this church and it had all these vines of honeysuckle growing around it.  I remember when dad taught me how to suck the “honey” out of the honeysuckle and would tickle my nose with the flower.  Just the other day I was pulling up to my best friend’s house and the smell of honeysuckle caught my nostrils, instantly taking my mind back to that memory. 

Then there are other memories associate with smell.  For instance, the time mom ran over a skunk and the whole care smell like skunk juice for what seemed like years!  Or the time something climbed in our wall and died and it made the entire house smell like death.  Where I live we have a river called the Trinity River, it smells so awful and every time we drive over it I really just want to puke. 

Smell has a lot of power!  In 2 Corinthians, Paul calls us the fragrance of Christ rising up to God and touching those around us.  How cool is that?!  It’s like God gets a whiff of us and is flooded with memories of His delight in His son.  How could he find anything but beauty in us if we smell like his Son?  The verse goes on to say that to some people we will be a life giving fragrance but to others we will have a smell of death and doom. 

I do think there are some people in this world that I can’t impact because they can’t get passed my smell.  I am one with Christ now, and I think that makes Christ look different than some people thought he did.  They smell Christ but it smells like skunk juice to them. 

Why? 

Well, for some I think it’s because the people who claimed to be wearing Christ perfume really just smelled like skunks and sprayed them with their religion until it drove them away.  Then there are others who can’t smell their own stink and when they get around genuine people who give off Christ’s aroma they are try to spray them with their skunk juice. 

It’s very interesting to me that this verse talks about two different smells that we can be to others but only describes one smell that we are to God.  People can call you one thing or another; accuse you of being wrong or not enough, but who you are to God… is perfect.  You are a sweet smell to him, laced with honeysuckle and Stetson for women, that fills is heart with joy and pride to call you His.  Don’t let the noses of this world convince you that you are anything less than lovely.

*2 Corinthians 2:15-16