Pilgrim Soldier

Eleanor over at Evening Beaches posted about fragrance a few days and it instantly reminded me of something from my past.

Back in 1989 I lived in Bristol and for a short time (4 months or so) did temporary work at a manufacturer of food flavourings. The process involved highly concentrated products that mixed together could produce a vastly varied range of flavours. In fact they could make almost anything you could imagine! Depending on what they were making on a given day, you could smell the fragrance of the place for quite a distance around the factory.

One day someone dropped a small vial of highly concentrated garlic oil which shattered all over the floor. The office I worked in was right next door and the odour very quickly worked its way into it. Life for the next week or so became unbearable because the stench was so strong that it permeated everything. I found that I had to go home and wash my clothes every day and take a shower.

As I sat and thought about this I thought about the way our lives must be. I think that one of the reasons that we seem so unable to attract new people into the faith is that we tend to give off a bad smell that is not very attractive to others. Instead of the smell of Christian love permeating itself into the lives of all around us, it is the smell of sin and hypocrisy that turns people away. Internal fighting within denominations or simply failing to forgive our brothers and sisters in Christ, leaves a church that smells bad.

I want my own life to be a sweet smelling fragrance rather than a bad smell and the only way to do this is to become more and more like Christ himself. I want to encourage Christian I come into contact with to be as Christlike as possible so that the Church becomes a place full of the most wonderful smells imaginable!