Skunk or Lilacs?
Which Aroma Do YOU Give?
A friend whom I haven’t seen in 40 years came to visit.
I wondered what it would be like. What would SHE be like now?
Much had happened in those 40 years. We both had married, raised families and were nurses. We also were both divorced, lost children to death (two of hers), and estrangement (me). We’d worked hard our entire lives, each coming from very dysfunctional homes.
Would we moan and groan over our hard times? Would we be able to get past the difficulties we’d each endured?
I wondered.
Our visit was so unusual. “Come in, have a seat and”…we began to talk right away, weaving the tales of our lives into the conversation. There were no preliminaries, we just jumped right into it all.
When she left, we hugged, I walked her to her car, waved and, four hours later, the visit was now in the past.
That evening, I noticed that her ‘scent’ remained in my home. My sweatshirt, too, had ‘her’ aroma on me. I changed out of my sweatshirt, hung it in the closet and went on about my day.
Today was chilly, rainy and I needed my sweatshirt. Two days later and there was still the faint aroma that she brought with her. Interesting!
I likened it to:
As far as God is concerned there is a sweet, wholesome fragrance in our lives. It is the fragrance of Christ within us, an aroma to both the saved and the unsaved all around us. 2 Corinthians 2:15
I wondered…
How did I smell to her?
Was there a sweet aroma of life that spread to her?
We didn’t complain about our lives and blame God for the heart-wrenching difficulties. We just each told our personal stories of what journeys we had been on since we were in our 20s.
Now I wonder — how do I appear to the rest of the world?
Am I a sweet aroma of life or a touch of death, polluting the airwaves and others with my disgruntled attitude, arguments, objections and grumpiness? Or are my words and actions filled with love…peace…joyfulness…patience…kindness… goodness and giving blessing wherever I go?
But thanks be to God! For through what Christ has done, He has triumphed over us so that now wherever we go He uses us to tell others about the Lord and to spread the Gospel like a sweet perfume. 2 Corinthians 2:14 TLB
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