By Jessica Brodie
I think I have what you might call highly absorbent hair. Intense smells, both good and bad, seem to get sucked into each hair strand.
Sometimes this is wonderful—for example, if I walk through the perfume section of a department store, or I’m cooking something delicious. The smell is all over me. I can’t escape it! I can’t even walk in the vicinity of a campfire without smelling like a crackling blaze the rest of the evening. Tonight as I write this, I’m certain my hair smells like barbecued ribs. (Sorry, my vegetarian friends!)
Sometimes, however, having highly absorbent hair is not so great. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve passed by someone smoking a cigarette—literally, a two-second stroll—only to smell like Marlboros the rest of the night. And let’s not mention that trip to the garbage dump. Yuck.
Thankfully, whatever gets absorbed into these super-powered hair strands doesn’t last forever. All it takes is one shampoo and I’m back to normal.
But there’s one smell I can never escape—the beautiful scent of the Lord. It’s a scent that transcends the physical, a scent that permeates our bones and casts out supernatural light and love everywhere we go, until the end of time. It’s a scent that makes demons tremble and flee, a scent that draws curious not-yet-Christians ever-closer, desirous of a relationship with the risen Christ even if they don’t know it yet.
I think of it a little like the way my cats rub up against me each day. If you’re a cat lover, or at least a cat owner, you probably know that cats mark their territory with oils secreted from glands around their mouths. So when my cats bump up against my hand when I’m getting their dinner ready, they’re not just expressing affection. They’re claiming me as their own, marking their territory. But they have to do it every day, over and over, because that scent goes away when I wash my hands.
When we choose to follow Jesus, that’s essentially what God does with us. Those of us who are Christians are marked by him, branded, claimed. We belong to him, now and forever.
And it’s not just God’s essence that brands me as his… I also get to share a fraction of his power. I don’t mean I have that power on my own, but rather that as God’s daughter, I get to have his Holy Spirit reside in my soul. So when I share the Gospel, it’s not really me sharing it—it’s God’s Spirit in me that does the real work. When I open my mouth to proclaim God’s truth, I don’t even have to worry—the Spirit will handle everything.
As Jesus said in Matthew 10:19, “When they deliver you over, do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say, for what you are to say will be given to you in that hour” (ESV).
And as he said in John 16:13-15, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine; therefore I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.”
Whether you have oddly absorbent hair like I do or not, that doesn’t matter. What does matter is the eternal scent you are marked with as a child of God.
His scent is beautiful, perfect, and all-powerful, and it’s woven through us for eternity. Thanks be to God!
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