Fragrant

Fragrant

Thank God! He has made us his captives and continues to lead us along in Christ’s triumphal procession. Now he uses us to spread the knowledge of Christ everywhere, like a sweet perfume. Our lives are a Christ-like fragrance rising up to God. But this fragrance is perceived differently by those who are being saved and by those who are perishing.

AS A YOUNG GIRL, I would walk into my house after a sleepover or a long day away and pause to draw in a deep breath, finding comfort in the smell of my house, of my family. It wasn’t that my house smelled of anything in particular; it simply smelled like home. My best friend’s house and other houses I visited had their own fragrance—not bad, just different from mine.

My ability to distinguish between my home and others based on an intangible but identifiable familial scent has long since faded away, but the feelings evoked as I walked through my childhood front door has remained etched into my memories. I didn’t know it then, but fragrance is powerful. A whiff of a long-gone loved one’s perfume or the odor of stringent cleaners lingering in hospital hallways can evoke powerful responses of grief or joy. It’s incredible how something seemingly intangible can impact us so deeply, and that’s why Scripture uses fragrance to describe our lives.

Comparing our lives to a Christlike fragrance means how we live is important, and what we do matters. If we are a living representative of Christ—and we are—then our life becomes an intangible, subtle fragrance pointing others toward God. Or not. It’s our choice.

What creates a fragrant life? The fruit of the Holy Spirit found in Galatians 5:22-23: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. The question is how well we live our faith out loud, how well we embody these character traits in the big and the small, when life is easy and when it feels impossibly hard. When we strive to practice these traits in the good and the bad, even imperfectly, we’ll be that Christlike fragrance wafting to heaven, to God himself.

Lord, may our lives, taken as a whole, be a sweet, Christlike fragrance to those around us. May we always point people toward you. Amen.

-Julie

One Good Step: Spend time in prayer asking God for one way to live a more Christ-fragrant life.