Leadership Thought: How Are You Smelling Today?

Dear Friends,

In one of my favorite devotional books, Streams in the Desert, English author Rita Snowden, tells of a village she once visited in Dover, England. As she was having her afternoon tea, she began to feel as if she were in a field of flowers. A wonderful, sweet aroma was everywhere.

She asked the café owner about the smell, and he pointed to a factory not far from where she sat. He said, “It's quitting time at the perfume factory, and what you smell is the perfume fragrance on the workers clothes.”

The story is a good reminder that wherever we as followers of Christ may go, we possess the opportunity to leave behind the scent of Jesus.

Wherever my feet may tread, or my voice is heard, I leave behind the fragrance of His love.

What kind of fragrance do we leave behind as we spend time with those who cross our path? Is our love, kindness, compassion, patience like that of the fragrance of Christ?

Paul writes, “For we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death; To the other, the fragrance of life."  2 Corinthians 2: 15.

To those who welcome God’s grace we are the small of life, but to those who reject that grace we are the smell of death for our life reminds them that in their rejection they are further distanced from God’s grace.

We cannot control a person's response to the fragrance of the perfume we wear, any more than we can control the response to what they see and hear in our lives, but if we remain true to Christ, we can be sure that the Spirit which is working in us will attract many to Him.

So, my admonition to each of us today is to ask this simple question: “How are we smelling?”

Yours in faith and friendship,

Tom