I hear Him "violently confronting me" ...Jenna! Allow me to take away this rotten smell so your fragrance smells of me alone, Life!
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
There is no in-between
When I think of the way someone smells - it could be good OR bad. It cannot be both, there is no in-between. The underlying fragrance may have been a good one, but any trace of rottenness takes away from the good fragrance and all the focus is on the bad fragrance. Put another way, like a piece of fruit that on the outside looks fresh and perfect, but you break into it and find it to be rotten ...the rottenness becomes all you can focus on. Life and death (rottenness) have competing smells, one always outweighs the other. "Jesus gained the attention of the morally bankrupt...the morally elite" because He embodied the "fragrance of life" and life only!
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Ah Jenna, I really like this.
ReplyDeleteAt a prayer night a couple nights ago we were led to pray through scripture and prayed 2 Cor 13:11b: "Aim for perfection, listen to my appeal, be of one mind, live in peace. And the God of love and peace will be with you." The Greek word for perfection is actually closer in meaning to 'restoration' or 'completeness'.
We reek of rottenness and brokenness, but Christ calls us to life- full and complete life. He sees through our exteriors and into the depths of our hearts and there is no in-between for Him! He loves us too much to see the dead parts of ourselves that eat away at our identities and the world and not show us a way to restoration and healing.
Thank you, Lord
Just want to acknowledge how painful the process of responding to that call to let him remove the rotten smell can be... It leads to death to self but the result is so beautiful... Thanks for your thoughts Jenna!
ReplyDeleteI like the analogy of rotting fruit - how the outside looks perfect but the inside has begun to rot. Its the inside that has to rot first before the appearance will be altered. It says alot about the states of our "insides" if we have begun to produce the outward effects of rotting....
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