To smell or not!

For most of the next seven days we are going to think about our senses and how they affect and shape our lives.

Personally, I find the sense of smell hugely important and I wonder how people with no or little sense of smell manage with things. Smell acts as a trigger in recalling a long-forgotten experience.

Our faith often uses fragrance - scent is found often in the Bible, it is in our way of worship and indeed in our mission as we mix with, and serve, others. It isn't just the smell of dinner cooking or bread baking or fresh coffee brewing. It is a smell of things, which my memory tells me are great and positive. Equally, an unpleasant smell is nasty, stomach churning and best erased from our minds until next time it should "hit" us!

I love the smell of freshly cut grass, the sweet smell of hay, the smell of fruit picking in the warm weather, the apples, blackberries etc and freshly washed clothes. I know many of the young children in school identified their clothing by its smell and they were accurate. I knew one lad who, throughout his time in primary school, you could identify where he had been in the building on a Monday, by his freshly laundered clothes. What smells do you like?

I remember being in hospital when I was very young and I smelt a certain smell. I never identified it. Occasionally now I smell it and it remains unrecognizable, but it is still there and immediately takes me back to being a child in hospital at about three or four years of age. Do you have such a memory from a smell?

“Of the five senses, smell is the one with the best memory.” Rebecca McClanahan

After a death the home can be filled with smells and the bereaved's senses are heightened. How many times have we heard people tell us they smelt a loved ones perfume or aftershave in a room in the deceased home? It is not at all uncommon and again quite unexplainable. Equally, when someone's journey of life is nearing its end, there can again be a very sweet scent within the room.

Seasons have their smells too. Think of the smell of winter on a cold, frosty morning - when you fill your lungs not with vehicle fumes but fresh air. Think of Spring the clean smell, the scent of flowers erupting and then the heavy smell of summer when it is warm, roses, sweet peas fill the air and then the peculiar smell on rain on hot dry ground, or after and during a thunderstorm. Think about Autumn, wood fires and bonfires, fruits and the dusty damp smell of upturned leaves on the ground, disturbed as you walk through them.

"According to Tom Stafford, senior lecturer in Psychology and Cognitive science at the University of Sheffield, smell is the oldest and most complex sense. Our ancestors lived in a world where chemicals could be found in the air and water, so they used their smell to sniff them out and protect themselves. Before sight, hearing, or even touch, creatures evolved to respond to the chemicals around them. It was a matter of survival."

We are informed that smell is the most important sense, but we know plenty of folk who have little or no sense of smell and are they any the less for it? We who can sniff, might associate a place or even people by their distinctive smells - a church might smell of damp, musty hymn books and Bibles, incense lingering in the air, paraffin or calor gas from fires or lights. But of course does that mean it is any the less important a place for our friends with limited or no smell? Cooking smells might well stimulate our appetites but for those who can't smell it doesn't mean a meal time is a disappointment, though food might not be as pleasurable. Public toilets can smell however clean they are! What about hospitals they still have a distinctive odour about them even these days without bleach, lysol etc. Smells are like cornerstones in our lives and subconsciously shape and develop things, memories into who we are and who we will still become.

There is much mention in the Bible about smells. People recognised by their clothing smells, the scents of spices, burning sacrifices, incense, oils for anointing, scented wood etc. There is much made of smells which are soothing and pleasing as well as the opposite! In the days of the Old Testament and indeed the New Testament odours were important to the people and they were signs to them if things were good or not. There are even books written about the importance of this sense of smell to the lives of early Christians etc. Think about Jesus when he is covered in nard and the smell of it fills the house.

John 12 v1-8

 Six days before the Passover, Jesus therefore came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. 2 So they gave a dinner for him there. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him at table. 3 Mary therefore took a pound1 of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. 4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was about to betray him), said, 5 “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?” 6 He said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it. 7 Jesus said, “Leave her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of my burial. 8 For the poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.”

Today, think about how you use of sense of smell in your home and outside it. What does it tell you about yourself? What memories does it trigger? Read again John 12 1-8. Does odour lead us deeper into our faith? Is it important to us in our worship in church or our quiet prayer times? Have we experimented with an incense stick, fragrant flowers or relaxing room spray? Are strong odours barrier to our time with God and why? What is it about the smell of a church that helps our worship?

The Prayers of Saints.

"And when He had taken the book, the four living creatures and the four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb, having every one of them harps, and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints." (Rev. 5:8.)

That latter clause is very peculiar, as connected with the grace of God in His own proper eternity. There are things His people suffer from, and that He never forgets. All their prayers are treasured up before God - their tears are put in His bottle, and treasured up. What! the sorrow I have forgotten, has God put that down? Is that one of the things that will shine? He can use all for His glory; but can the prayers and groans of a saint be kept and have a special place, be an odour of a sweet savour to God? The sinner does not know this; but a poor broken one can say, "Not only does God remember my prayer, but He puts it by on His own throne, like the pot of manna which He liked to be laid up, to be remembered as a trophy of the way He carried His people through the wilderness." And so will their prayers tell there what their special need of His presence was here. "Golden vials." Gold marks the divine character of that by which they are kept; the odour, a fragrant incense going up; the fragrance ever the same. Is that said of the prayers of saints? Yes; not one of them lost. The Lord Jesus knew them all; they were ever before God.

G. V. Wigram.