With five great
sensory gateways, we’ve all been blessed,
But of the five,
there is one that we hear of less.
By the eye and the
ear gates, the others are trumped.
With these, plus taste
and touch, much of life is now ‘clumped.’ 1
Of the five, the
one that’s left is the gate of smell.
It’s of this gate
that there is a story to tell.
So sit back, relax
and take a deep breath,
As we ponder this
one gate that is left.
We think senses are
gateways to our brains,
All functioning as
our sensory lanes.
But in essence,
each one feeds our spirit,
With things from
life we filter, then edit.
With a unique
organ, each ‘lane’ is equipped:
Eye, ear, tongue,
skin, nose, with their DNA script.
With skin, each
organ is covered,
So by each, our feelings are stirred.
But there’s something
special about the nose.
It is the only
‘lane’ through which air flows.
‘So what?!’, you might ask.
By God, the nose
has been uniquely blessed:
Only by it,
is His breath of life accessed!
By four dominant
senses perhaps you perceive,
How they and their
organs help shape what you believe.
But the nose and
sense of smell? Now that’s a stretch!
Really, can smells
onto our spirit… something etch?
Consider this:
Spirit, not body,
is who and what we are – our essence.
By our spirit, not
body, we have what’s called cognizance.2
The Latin root of
the English word, spirit, means breath.
As we breathe, what
we smell infuses our spirit’s health.
Smell, our most
direct and most lingering sense,3
Immediately impacts
our true essence!
Since in God’s
spirit image we have all been created,
Imagine smells He
loves, or by which He’s aggravated!
In this Age of
Grace, it is not incense or roasting flesh,
But our life’s
quality in Christ by which God is refreshed.
In Christ, sweet, soothing
aromas to God are sanctioned,
But against smoke
in His nostrils …we have been cautioned.4
To Him, our sins
are as pungent as lingering smoke.
Perhaps you have smelled
it, so awful that it can choke!
With thoughts of
it, that sickening feeling you won’t escape!
Thus, with
repentance, He blots out our sins …for His own sake! 5
We can choose which
smells of us with God will be lingering,
And whether to our
prayers He’ll be eagerly listening.
He gives us a clear
choice: to be like incense or like smoke,
To be a soothing aroma, or ...His anger provoke.
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1 Typically, the four dominant senses
2 Cognizance: awareness, knowledge, reality,
perception
3 ‘Smell is the most direct of all our
senses. We see only where there is light enough, taste only when we put
things into our mouths, touch only when we make contact with someone or
something, hear only sounds that are loud enough to hear. But we smell always
and with every breath. Cover your eyes and you will stop seeing, cover your
ears and you will stop hearing, but if you cover your nose and stop smelling,
you will die. We live in a constant wash of [smells]. What’s perhaps most
extraordinary is that scent lodges itself largely in the long-term memory system of the brain…’
4 [Sin is] smoke in My nostrils, a fire
that burns all the day. (Isaiah 65:5)
5 ‘I, even I, am He who blots out your
transgressions, for My own sake, and remembers your sins no
more.’ (Isaiah 43:25) Our repentance
is mutually beneficial to us and also to God, Himself.
