The scent of earth

Rarely but here in the Northwest do I smell the same scent of earth: the damp ground, the perfume of flowers, the aroma of ferns, the undefinable mix that breathes freshness into the air around me. I miss it when I’m away but have difficulty expressing to others exactly what I’m talking about. The memory is like a vapor. I only know when I return and say, “Ah, yes...I’ve missed this!”

When I was young, we used to travel to our grandparents’ cabin in the Adirondacks, where a walk to the spring yielded fresh drinking water for our stay. We would fill up our jugs and lug them back to our ‘camp.’  I remember there, too, the scent of birches and evergreens and the spring-fed lake which would shock us with it’s cold welcome. Once we adjusted to the temperature and lay back into the water, our hair felt like cornsilk as we swished it about.

When we remember something, it’s not always like being there.  We try to re-member everything so we can dwell in that place once again. But it eludes us. The memory provides us a snapshot of both sight and emotion, but we usually can’t recapture the actual beauty of the experience.

Sometimes our experiences with God are like that.  We know there was power, there was deep joy, there was indescribable peace, and we were enveloped in overwhelming love.  But we see it as a snapshot from the past, rather than being in the midst of it once again.  We sometimes even wonder if it really happened, or if we only imagined it.

After decades of these experiences, however, we cease to wonder, and instead develop a profound faith in God’s tender love and faithfulness. The scent of His Presence lingers. We only have to close our eyes and we are there once more.  We don’t remember Him from a distance in time. Instead He is ‘re-membered’ at that very moment and in that very place where we whisper to Him.

Being with others of kindred heart and spirit gathered together, however, will often magnify this ‘re-membering.’ He has set this up on purpose, I believe, to draw us together in encouragement, in joy, in thanksgiving, and also in times of sorrow, grief, persecution and struggle. His Body is ‘re-membered’ (the members put together in a wholeness in which His life is found). His scent contains both earth (His Creation) and Heaven. If we find ourselves making other choices for our time, week after week, we are missing out on one of the greatest blessings He has for us.  And the memory of what it is like to be in the midst of His glorious presence will become like a faded photograph. We may fold up the album and tuck it away on the shelf and later wonder how we ended up so bereft of that indescribable fragrance in our lives, both the receiving and the emitting of it to others.

If you are not part of a fellowship where He delights to show up, offer your gifts to help it become so. Or if they are not willing, find one where His fragrance can be found, though it be the smallest of mangers.
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“Where Sky and water meet, where the waves grow sweet,
Doubt not, Reepicheep, to find all you seek...”
—CS Lewis, The Last Battle