Sweet Smell

We spent some family time today and traveled to a neighboring city where we had a great lunch and then went to a large mall for some shopping.

Entering one of the major department stores I had a memory surface as I walked by the perfume counters. I remember going shopping with my mom and my paternal grandma. We go and pick her up at her house for a day out. She would be dressed up in one of her pretty polyester pantsuits and all of her jewelry. We would shop at the major department stores back then, like Higbees, Sears, and Penney's. We would eat lunch out-sometimes at Woolworth's. It was always a fun time. Some things have not changed-there were people that would stand at the perfume and makeup counters ready to offer assistance. Today as you walk through a store there are still girls that stand at all the different brands and offer you a "sample spray".

Most of us probably have one or more bottles of perfume or cologne on our counters or dressers.  Some of the bottles are very pretty but they don't do you any good unless you use them. I have my favorites and love to spritz it on each day before I go out the door. Perfume is supposed to give us a pleasant scent. It should enhance, not cover up or make us stink!

Perfumery can be traced back all the way to Bible time and before. It is said that the first chemist was a woman who was a perfume maker in Mesopotamia, using flowers and oils to create perfume.

 We are told about perfume in the Bible a couple of different times where it was used on Christ:

Luke 7:37-38

"And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment, 

And stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment." 

Mark 14:3 

"And being in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious; and she brake the box, and poured it on his head." 

It was something that was costly and yet she felt it was important enough to use on Jesus-what a testimony.

Perfume is mentioned in the old testament in Proverbs in relation to good advice from a friend

Proverbs 27:9 

"Ointment and perfume rejoice the heart: so doth the sweetness of a man's friend by hearty counsel."

We are compared to what could be called perfume in a passage in the New Testament:

2 Corinthians 2:15 

"For we are unto God a sweet savour of Christ." 

How can we do that? As we live our lives one day at a time with Christ as our focus we will strive to serve Him and do what would honor Him. We would not want to tarnish our testimony or "stink" to those around us.