The Fragrance You Didn't Choose

"...we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing." - 2 Corinthians 2:15 NIV

You have been around someone whose calm changed everything. Not what they said, but the way they carried themselves that lingered after they were gone. You may not have named it at the time. You just knew the conversation felt different when they were there.

Paul knew what that was. He said, "...we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing," 2 Corinthians 2:15. That kind of presence cannot be borrowed or rehearsed, only received. It comes from something real with God that has had time to settle in.

There was a woman who entered a dinner uninvited, "...came there with an alabaster jar of perfume," Luke 7:37. She stood behind Jesus weeping, washed His feet with her tears, and poured the perfume over them. She had no standing, only a need so deep that the cost of being seen stopped mattering. Simon was the host, the one who belonged at that table, and he never so much as leaned forward. Have you been in a room where someone carried that kind of certainty, so settled you could feel it from across the table? Have you felt that, when the familiar is safer than moving toward someone you do not fully understand?

She walked toward Jesus anyway, not forgiven, not confident, just desperate, and the forgiveness met her there. "...her many sins have been forgiven, as her great love has shown," Luke 7:47. Then He turned to her and said, "...your faith has saved you; go in peace," Luke 7:50. Everyone in that room saw a broken woman. Jesus recognized something in her she never knew she had.

When we realize God has been growing something in us that we did not plant, maybe we just stay close to Him. Jesus put it simply, "...remain in me, as I also remain in you," John 15:4. A flower does not produce its own scent but stays rooted in what feeds it, and the fragrance holds because the connection does.

You may have had a conversation where someone told you later your words helped, and you had no idea you said anything worth hearing. Could that be how the fragrance works, reaching people you were not trying to reach, "...as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another," Proverbs 27:17. You did not choose this scent and cannot bottle it. The people closest to you already know it is there. Live it out.

Prayer

Father, we did not choose this fragrance and cannot produce it alone. Thank You that what You have grown in us reaches further than we know. Help us carry it well. Amen.