Just a note: A Fragrant Offering

It was just over 22 years ago that I developed a problem with polyps up my nose! My GP referred me to a hospital in the Midlands to have them removed. Unfortunately, the surgeon removed more than the polyps, and as a result, I have had no sense of smell since that day!

Sometimes when my wife and I are walking in the country, she will comment on the lovely fragrance of some flowers, but unfortunately I can only appreciate their beauty, not their fragrance.

In the Bible there are nearly 30 references to smells, aromas, fragrances and perfumes. In Old Testament times, God’s people would offer pleasant smelling sacrifices to God as part of their worship.

In the New Testament we read of a occasion when Mary, the sister of Martha, took a pint of expensive perfume and poured it on Jesus’ feet. John tells us that the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume.

Judas Iscariot, who later betrayed Jesus, criticised Mary for doing this and said,: “Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor? It was worth a year’s wages.”

However, he didn’t say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief and, as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it.

Elsewhere in the New Testament, we read of how the Christians who lived in Philippi sent St Paul a gift of money. Paul wrote back to them thanking them for their generosity, and he tells them that their gift was “a fragrant offering pleasing to God”. He then went on to tell them that God would bless them for their generosity.

So, in the same way that a whiff of someone’s perfume or aftershave can be very pleasing, Paul was saying to the Christians in Philippi, that the gift of financial assistance that they had given to him to help him in his work as an Apostle, was pleasing to God.

So, if being generous to others - financially or in other ways - can be likened to offering God a pleasant fragrance, is there some act of generosity that you or I could do in the coming year, that would be a real help to someone?

If so, it would be also be a fragrance that would be pleasing to God as well.