How is the baking business, you ask? I just got back from the gym and I’m pretty sure I sweat cinnamon, if that’s any indication.

I know it’s a stretch, but it made me think about the fragrance of Christ. As a creative writer, I know smell is the sense that best captures a reader – the sense that will take the reader directly to the place in the story where all the action is because we remember smells. I can be lingering in a play room and instantly be transported to my childhood by the smell of a toy. Maybe you have passed by someone on the street and you can’t help turning around because you almost feel like you know him… because of the cologne he’s wearing.

I love that our sense of smell is carried on the invisible wind, but the proof is in the vivid images that rush our minds at the slightest whiff. This thought led to my remembering this verse from 2 Corinthians,

¹⁴ But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him everywhere.¹⁵ For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing.¹⁶ To the one we are an aroma that brings death; to the other, an aroma that brings life. And who is equal to such a task? ¹⁷ Unlike so many, we do not peddle the word of God for profit. On the contrary, in Christ we speak before God with sincerity, as those sent from God.

We are willing captives in God’s triumphal procession, spreading around the fragrance of the knowledge of Him everywhere. Wow. I sincerely wonder if the fragrance of Christ lingers when I leave a place. When people are around me, does their mind have a vivid picture of Christ front and center? It’s way more eternally significant than leaving cinnamon in my fragrant wake.

Anyway, these were my thoughts while on the treadmill tonight… when I wasn’t watching the BYU volleyball game (thanks to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, BYU international television accompanied my workout… which reminds me – I should get Hope College to televise some sports action down here!).