There aren’t many people I know (except my daughter-in-law, Holly and my best friend’s daughter, Lindsay) that have a super sniffer like I do. For whatever reason, I have a nose that can detect even minute amounts of specific smells in the air. My crazy nose multiplies those tiny particles by 100, so that scents hit me faster and harder than most. It’s like a perpetual wave of smells are poised and waiting to ambush me. This is great when the scent is fragrant, but horrible when the scent is foul. For example, I can tell just by standing next to someone whether or not they have recently been in a Subway sandwich shop. The smell is unmistakable. If I get a whiff of a nasty smell, especially body funk, the scent stays in my nostrils for hours! I just can’t get rid of it. Smells also trigger memories in me like no other. I can still remember as a kid when my mom used to make boxed Chef Boyardee Pizzas and put the grated cheese on the top. To me, it smelled like baby vomit, so I would have nothing to do with eating it...thus I thought I hated pizza until the age of 12 when I discovered restaurant pizza. Yummy! Too bad I didn’t keep my first impression. It would’ve saved me hundreds over the years.
Our sense of taste and smell work together. Smells make things taste delicious or revolting. They cause us to want to devour something immediately or to run away holding our noses and trying not to get sick. Everyone who's ever had a cold knows, if you can’t smell it, you probably won't be able to taste it either...and seriously, what's the point of eating if you can't taste it? With my super sniffer I can easily fall into temptation because just a small whiff of baking bread or a sweet bakery cake can send me into a Pavlovian dog slobber, from which there is usually no turning back.It takes a lot of sacrifice to stop the snowball effect. It’s interesting that the Bible actually has some things to say about smells and their relationship to sacrifice. In the Old Testament fragrant oil was used along with blood sacrifices as commanded by Levitical law.
2 Chronicles 13:11 -Every morning and evening they present burnt offerings and fragrant incense to the LORD. They set out the bread on the ceremonially clean table and light the lamps on the gold lamp stand every evening. We are observing the requirements of the LORD our God.
The Bible teaches that Jesus was a fragrant offering to God and we also are both fragrant incense to God and living sacrifices.
Ephesians 5:2- Be ye therefore as followers of God, and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
Ezekiel 20:41- I will accept you as fragrant incense when I bring you out from the nations and gather you from the countries where you have been scattered, and I will show myself holy among you in the sight of the nations.
Before I became a real believer my attitude and behavior both stunk! They were a stench in God’s nostrils. There was certainly nothing sweet or fragrant about me that He should have wanted to love or embrace. I am so thankful that He knew the real me and brought me out from a place far away from Him to make me a clean, fragrant sacrifice to Him. I want to be so close to Him, to linger in His presence so long, that in the way I walk, talk, eat, and drink, I will have the unmistakable aroma of having been with Him. O Lord, let it be!
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