Aroma

It had been six months since Phil had died and a year since I had moved from being their pastor when I got Rita's letter. Long distance was a bit expensive then and  Al Gore hadn't invented the Internet, so Rita wrote the last pastor she had. She missed Phil badly. "Every night I take one of his shirts from the closet and hold it when I go to bed. I haven't changed his pillowcase either. I can still smell his aftershave so I hang on. The aroma on the shirts is fading and I can't stand it. It is all I have left to hang on to."

It had been four years since our oldest son Matt had left. He'd been working and going to school and wouldn't be coming back except for weekend visits so I began to take over some of the closet and drawer space in his room. But I left an almost empty bottle of Polo Sport aftershave in one drawer. I could still get a mild whiff of it now and then. It caused me to pray to and thank the Lord and remember when Polo Sport was strong in the house.

I have the number 242 in my head. I believe it was the number of paperback books that were in Clay's closet. Some were about the Beatles, some about the Olympics, but most of them were Peanuts by Charles Shultz. You could open Clay's closet and see them. Not many clothes hung there. The shelves had books and the floor was stacked with books. He had started collecting them when we has just old enough to read. About Teenage-ville he took other interests. I would occasionally use them myself for sermon quotes from good ole' Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Linus and the gang. Some times, after he left for college, I'd just open his closet and breath deeply. It gave forth a musty, gluey, kinda non-sugary sweet smell. To me it was the aroma of a brown eyed boy saving quarters, going to Half Price Books on Northwest Hwy in Dallas to buy books and reading them in the back of the van or on his bed.

I remember being hit by it when I stepped out of the shower. Out the bathroom door to the left, down the hall with another left and right into nirvana in the kitchen. It was Pam baking an apple pie. The whole house had been enveloped with the scent of buttery crust, cinnamon and sugar poured over our neighbor's fresh picked apples. The pie would never greet my lips with a kiss. It was, alas for another but I was okay with that. I think I had already had the best part.

There are sights that can stop us dead in our tracks. There are people for whom we will go out of our way to feel their touch. There are sounds we are trained to listen for from voices of loved ones, the nursery, the phones, and the ubiquitous electronic devices. So ever present are these that they are easier to miss but the smells, oh, the smell will get us every time. They sneak up from behind like a prankster friend ready to jump us. Aroma's can have such a strong link to our souls that heart rates can change, blood pressure can fluctuate, and real feelings are elicited from just the memories that certain smells evoke. One man can walk into a mechanic shop and be taken back to the childhood he loved by the smell of gas and grease. Another can smell the same and grow ill thinking of the pain his father endured from working too hard, too long as the only mechanic in a busy service station.

Some aromas attract and some repel but few are totally neutral for all people. Maybe that's what Paul had in mind in II Corinthians 2:14-16: But thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumphal procession in Christ and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of Him. For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and to those who are perishing.  To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life.

Imagine that, the fragrance of His knowledge, the aroma of Christ himself! The church is that lingering fragrance of love lost that can be regained. The church is that unmistakable aroma of Someone you love, Someone you miss, Someone you need. The church, you, are that whiff on the Wind of the Spirit that reminds and beckons the lonely, the sad, the hurting, the tired, the longing, the lost to remember where home really is.

Breathe deep, O world, and may the fragrance you find in the church, be the sweet smell of Life.

Cos