The peonies are popping and boy are they gorgeous this year! Those big, snowball looking blooms, ranging in color from white to dark pink or a mix of both, are for some reason super beautiful this Spring. There are tons of them in town and they are in full bloom on every block. Ours out here at the foot of the mountain are just beginning to open up. The ants move slower out here, I guess.
I love these flowers, they remind me of my Grandma. She used to call them pinies. We have a row of pinies between our house and the barn that were planted by another Grandma many, many years ago. I pass by these peonies often and their sweet smell hits you before you even get close to them. Oh my goodness, the smell of a good peony is intoxicating. It does something to my brain that makes me want to eat it up – I don’t, of course?
If you take your nose on a smell tour of my row of pinies, you will notice though that they all smell different. Some smell wonderful, some smell yucky and some have no smell at all. Have you noticed that too? Every peony is gorgeous to look at, but they don’t all have the same smell. On my walks in town, I can’t resist the urge to stick my nose in a piney bloom hanging over a fence and it’s a little disappointing when it has no smell. It’s even more disappointing when it has a yucky smell. Those gorgeous big blooms are a little deceptive, aren’t they? They look like they’d smell delicious, not all do. It’s deceptive. You can’t tell the smell until you stick your nose into it.
Then the LORD said to Moses, “Gather fragrant spices—resin droplets, mollusk shell, and galbanum—and mix these fragrant spices with pure frankincense, weighed out in equal amounts. Using the usual techniques of the incense maker, blend the spices together and sprinkle them with salt to produce a pure and holy incense. Grind some of the mixture into a very fine powder and put it in front of the Ark of the Covenant, where I will meet with you in the Tabernacle. You must treat this incense as most holy. Never use this formula to make this incense for yourselves. It is reserved for the LORD, and you must treat it as holy. Anyone who makes incense like this for personal use will be cut off from the community.” Exodus 30:34-38
Ahhh, the sweet perfume of holiness. An aroma so sweet placed in front of the meeting place with God. Think about that. A pure and holy scent. An incense so full of holiness that we can never make it for ourselves. A fragrant formula reserved only for the Lord. A fragrance never to be duplicated, or brought to human level lest it smell sour or have no fragrance at all. What does holiness smell like? A fragrant peony, perhaps?
I, the Lord, am the one who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God. You must therefore be holy because I am holy. 1 Peter 1:16
Ahhh, the sweet perfume of holiness – not a suggestion, not a request, but a command. Holiness, not because of who we are, but because of who He is. An aroma so sweet presented at the altar of our Lord. An aroma that says we are set apart, no longer influenced by sin. A fragrance produced by total devotion to God to be used for His special purposes. A pungenceness so strong that you can’t tell where it is coming from – you can smell it without visualizing the source. We are to exude holiness. It’s not a suggestion or a request, but a command. Do we smell different? Do we stink from sin? Are we smell-less because of complacency, are we too comfortable? Do we smell as if we are set apart or do we smell like everyone else? God is close enough to tell. How do we smell? Like a fragrant peony, perhaps?