Noses and Nostalgia by Nancy Taylor

The air is heavy today with the scent of rain and fall. It’s funny how our sense of smell can instantly transport us to another time and place. One whiff of hedgerows and roses and I’m back in England. Salty sea air wafting on the breeze transports me to the Outer Banks in North Carolina. Scotch pines swaying in the breeze take me to the Northwoods of Wisconsin. A particular cologne brings back all the feelings of young love because that’s what my husband wore when we were dating. The smell of cedar brings me back to days of playing in our walk-in cedar closet as a child. Gasoline and lawn clippings and burgers on the grill are all the best scents of summer. Maybe it’s no mistake that the words nostril and nostalgia are so similar.

The funny thing is, we can’t really describe a smell the way we can describe a sight or taste or sound or feeling. It’s something you have to experience for yourself, and it’s not always an experience we choose. Scientists tell us that the sense of smell is the most direct of all our senses. As we breathe in, tiny nerves transmit information to our brains. The effect of a smell is instantaneous, unedited, and visceral. And the information that enters our brains through our noses lodges in the long-term memory section of our brain. The effects of what we breathe in without even knowing it are long-lasting and inescapable. That is why smells have the power to bring up long-buried emotions of joy or sorrow, reduce our stress and improve our cognitive performance.

Perhaps the power of scent was on Paul's mind when he wrote, “we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life.” (2 Corinthians 2:15–16) Christians have a unique smell about us. We carry with us and in us the life of the Spirit, and he creates in us rivers of living water, which carries the scent of life and growth and hope. The promise of true life.

The scent of a Christian is interpreted differently by different people, just as the smell of grass clippings makes one person think of happy summer days and another think of miserable allergies. Those who are being drawn to life in Christ know that it is the aroma of the life-giving love of God, and to them it is the smell of life. The presence of another believer transports them to the glorious home they will one day share as they live in God’s presence. It is a tangible reminder of the worldwide family that we became part of when we believed in Jesus.

Those who have turned their back on God associate Christians with judgment because a Christian’s life of love and obedience to God makes theme realize that their own life stinks of death and destruction. To them, Christians reek of death. Maybe they are not too far off, because after all we are carrying in our bodies the death of Christ, the death which brings life.

There is another aspect to the scent of a Christian—we are, in our very existence as well as in our acts of love and worship, a fragrant offering to God. The prayers we breathe out and the good deeds we do for others are like the sweet aroma of sacrificial incense wafting up to him. (Leviticus 1:17) We are “a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God.” (Philippians 4:18) In these ways we imitate Christ, who “has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma.” (Ephesians 5:2) Regardless of how we are viewed by those around us, the scent of life and love that clings to us as believers is pleasing to God. It is a sign that we are a living sacrifice to him, that we have offered ourselves, body and soul, in worship to the Creator.

So the next time a scent takes you by surprise and transports you like a magic carpet to another time and place, think of the aroma of your life. Are you letting Christ flow through you so that you bring the scent of life to those around you? Are your attitudes and actions a sacrifice of praise that releases a sweet aroma pleasing to the Lord?

Follow Nancy's blog on her website: nancytaylorwrites.

The Great Homesickness by Rachel Rim

When I imagine childhood, that crescent of time when we’re somehow more human than we’ll ever be again, I picture strips of asphalt and living room windows. For the first seven years of my life, my father pastored a church an hour’s drive away from home. Since the small group my family attended always met in the houses of its more proximate members, it sometimes felt like we were eternally making our way home. Sitting in the backseat, drifting in and out of our parents’ conversation, my twin sister and I would gaze out our car seat windows in that hazy twilight between waking and sleeping.

By the time we turned off the freeway and into our quiet neighborhood, the world outside was a dark blur of shadows broken only by the occasional lights left on in people’s houses. Drowsy, wrapped in my own tangle of arms and legs, the warm air from the vents billowing out the Chicago cold, I’d stare out the window into strangers’ homes. With the infection of night, they seemed infused with mystery—esoteric spaces that opened an ache inside my chest, bright squares of hallways and curtains that coaxed whole worlds from their calyxes. Though I knew in my head that they were made of walls, ceilings and floors just like any other house, they seemed illuminated into mystery, a grain of belief I did not have to fight to hold.

Some fifteen years later, a diploma under my belt and the awning of adulthood now situated firmly above my head, I am envious of a time when anything—particularly faith—could be held with the gentle grace of childhood. These days, it seems there is nothing that does not require inordinate strength to believe. Living rooms, it turns out, are just living rooms; draw close enough, and the world beyond the sill shrinks back into the mere luminescence of your longing, a reality language can contain.

Once, sitting in the back of a different car making its way home from a different church, my sister and I asked our father why he believed in God. I remember his momentary quiet, how it fell like snow upon the dashboard, and then his simple answer: “Because of beauty.” I remember expecting a more dogmatic answer from a professor of philosophy.

At 23 years old, I don’t know much. About the only thing I know with certainty is that I don’t know as much as I thought I did a few years ago. Sometimes, oftentimes, it feels like life got confusing far before I got courageous, if I’ve ever gotten courageous, and this philosoher's daughter who grew up exposed to more theology than the average adult, can never quite seem to summon enough faith.

Yet if you were to return my question back to me and wait for my own snowfall silence to melt into words, then like so many times before I would quote my father: I believe because of beauty. I believe—because of beauty. Because of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetry and the feel of nylon guitar strings; because of the miracle of friends and the paradox of the gospel; because of the strange amalgamation of darkness and childhood that takes strangers’ homes and flowers them into grace, and the insatiable ache for God that remains our deepest proof of him. If I had to venture a guess on any truth, it might be this: longing, like beauty, is inherently apologetic.

Rilke puts it another way, in a prayer that seems to float out an old window and into the surrounding night: “You, the Great Homesickness we could never shake off.” 

Your Kingdom Come--By a Worker in a Difficult Place

"Your Kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." When we don't know how to pray, these words from our Lord’s prayer express our longing to see the glory of God fill the earth as the waters cover the sea.

My husband and I have lived and served in a few different countries—each with its unique beauty and unique brokenness. In each place, it has become more and more apparent that though God answers our prayers in different ways, the one prayer he always answers "yes" to is the heartfelt cry, "Give me Jesus."

In one country, it was difficult to keep a positive outlook when we looked out our window each day to the same trash, the same poverty and the same deeply ingrained societal problems. One day, as I visited a local orphanage, a young mother tearfully dropped off a small child, the youngest of eight. They could not feed all of their children and hoped that at least here, at the orphanage, their youngest child would have enough to eat.

I returned home completely disheartened by the severity of the needs around me and my own limitations as a mother of small children (what good would a bag of tangerines and a box of oatmeal cookies do in face of such great need?). Not knowing what else to do, I wrote down a prayer full of requests that seemed impossible unless the Lord were to intervene in a miraculous way.

I wrote, "Lord, I pray for M, who knows the truth but is wobbling on the fence. Please help her to sink her roots deep in you. Help her not to be drawn in to the lifestyle of her boyfriend (who, at the time, was in prison for dealing drugs)."

I continued to write. "Father, please help N's husband to be drawn to you. She loves you so much. And Lord, please help there to be a Christian school here, so some of these kids can grow up learning your ways. I prayed for an orphanage where they can hear about you from their very earliest days. And Father, please help some of these children to be adopted into Christian homes." And my list went on. Finally, when it was finished, I felt a bit better, folded up the paper and went on with our busy lives.

Ten years later, then living in another place, I came across that old prayer list, and realized to my amazement that each request had been answered in specific and tangible ways. There was a school and an orphanage there and several of those very orphans had been adopted into Christian families, some in locally and some abroad; M was working in another country among a minority population there, sharing the gospel; N's husband had come to Christ. Tears came to my eyes as I thanked God for answering every single one of those requests, each of which only God could have done.

It struck me then that most of the things that really matter—the salvation of a soul, the return of a prodigal are things only God can do. Sometimes we are blessed, as we were then, to see specific, positive answers to prayer. But sometimes he says no. Sometimes as sure as we are that God is able to bring the dead to life, we also live in a broken world with its reality that some pain might never go away this side of eternity. Whether it is chronic physical pain, a broken relationship, a discouraging brain scan or silence where we hoped to hear a heartbeat, in those instances we must depend even more on the promise that he will never leave us and one day will make all things right.

Currently, we live in a place where many people are anxious and fearful. We live in a place where followers of Christ are in prison. We also have the privilege to live alongside people from many countries, some who have trusted Jesus, and all from people groups we prayed for when our kids were small.

Every day, at least five times a day, I am reminder of why we are here, and we pray. We pray that people will be delivered from their bondage to fear, and experience God's perfect love in Jesus. We pray for believers in prison, that their hearts will be encouraged as they wait, and that the God who holds the hearts of kings in his hands will also put mercy in their hearts. Only God's perfect love can cast out the fear, lies and darkness that cause people in power to mistreat perceived enemies as they do.

There is one thing we can pray with confidence. In the final reckoning, God's justice will prevail, so we pray for his kingdom to come and set things right. Meanwhile, in the waiting, we thank him for his mercy, because there are still many, even many we know and love, who have not turned to him yet. And he is patient with us, "not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance."

In the waiting, God has taught me that although we may seem and certainly feel rather vulnerable and even powerless, Jesus has made a way for us to draw near to him. He gives us full access to the One who is over all, who knows our names and hears our prayers.

So we keep praying.

Walking Toward the Furnace by Wil Triggs

This week our small group looked at Daniel 3 and it was quite a time.

The lesson encouraged us to consider ourselves in light of King Nebuchadnezzar. This is something I have never really done. Nebuchadnezzar is the bad guy, the crazy guy, the anger–filled, worship–me pagan polytheistic despot. He’s inconsistent and a flip-flopper. I don’t like to consider how I might be like him. I’m not asking people to worship me, and I’m not throwing people into the fire.

To my surprise, the group didn’t have any problems identifying with him. In the discussion, people animatedly talked of the kind of structures we build for ourselves, how we want to be in control and worshiped (or at least obeyed) by those over whom we have control.

When we are confronted with someone who doesn’t go along with our ways, sometimes we get angry. Maybe it’s not seven-times-the-heat angry, but we aren’t welcoming to people who disagree, who dare to worship and think about God or church or life differently—perhaps even more rightly—than we do. Why don’t they do things our way? The way we want. Don’t they know that we know best Nebuchadnezzar’s judgment found them guilty, defiant lawbreakers who needed to be thrown into the fire.

I had never really considered myself to be a little Neb, so now, I stand corrected, and a little humbled, and not a little embarrassed at the smallness of the realms we hold on to.

Yet the real humility comes when I compare myself to Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.

So then our talk turned toward the furnace, and how the three young people defiantly and steadfastly stood strong and walked toward the furnace. Those taking them to the furnace perished in the heat. That was one hot fire. Still, they walked to the furnace and stepped into it.

What we face is not the literal furnace fire that Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego faced. Instead, it’s the challenge of life itself answering the prayer of Jesus, “not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.” (John 17:15). To be steadfast and trust that God himself is protecting us along the way even when it doesn’t go our way.

And I think about how much easier, more organically me it is to stoke the furnace in judgment of those not like me than it is to step into the furnace of faith itself.

So then I think about people I know or know of who are in their own kind of furnaces.

How do Yousaf and Ruth stand firm? After enduring persecution in their homeland, moving here and now facing the mystery and pain of their daughter’s condition?

Or Ash and Katrina enduring the multiple surgeries of their young son?

Or Nancy who faced a surgery for her daughter and a devastating house fire at the very same time. (You can read that story here.)

What about pastors and other church leaders in Sudan who were arrested for not submitting to a government directive to hand over their churches to government control.

Then there’s Andrew Brunson who has been held in a Turkish prison for nearly a year and appears to be held as a bargaining chip by Turkey in their desire for the U. S. to extradite a Muslim cleric they don’t like who’s living in Pennsylvania. NPR reported the president of Turkey saying just a couple days ago, "You have a pastor, too. You give us that one and we'll work with our judiciary and give back yours."

How can it be that someone so devoted to the care of a people not his own is imprisoned and treated like chattel in some kind of global trade?

I know that God is sovereign, that none of this happens without his knowledge. We haven’t reached the end of the story. I believe that God’s power is made manifest in our weaknesses. When Nebuchadnezzar saw the miraculous preservation of the three young people in the fiery furnace, he saw himself and God in a new light. He was amazed.

How can people see God in such things? Somehow, I think it’s God doing stuff in us that we can’t possibly do ourselves that speaks in ways we can’t. 

So whatever paths we walk today, let’s pray for the fortitude to be faithful as we walk toward the furnace and look forward to when we emerge from it impossibly and miraculously unsinged.

In Case of Emergency by Lorraine Triggs

I never had pennies in my penny loafers. My mother insisted that my sisters and I used dimes or quarters instead of pennies, that way we always would have change to call her from a pay phone in case of an emergency. 

That worked in theory, but practice was another thing. Was it our fault that the bus stop home from school was right across the street from the bakery? Were we to blame that our after school club ran late that wintry afternoon, and we were hungry? Was it our fault that the bus rumbled by as we spent both bus fare and emergency money on warm cookies, and then ended up walking home in a snow storm. Apparently it was our fault, as we found out when we arrived home an hour or so later than expected.

My fast and free spending of emergency money caught up with me on my first short-term missions trip. It was with Operation Mobilization (OM). During the pre-trip conference in Belgium, OM staff emphasized the need to always have emergency money on our persons. Oh-oh, emergency money? How did the venerable George Verwer discover my checkered past with emergency money and cookies? I was doomed even before my summer service in Italy began.

Providentially, my teammates shared similar spending habits, and as the summer progressed, our emergency money became gelato money. It was good to have such team unity.

The truth about emergency money—whether you use it responsibly for emergencies only or for cookies and gelatos—it is a finite resource.

I remember clutching coins in my hands as a child, and once that meager finite resource was gone, I thought my hands smelled like money. This makes me wonder about other finite resources I latch on to, relying on them as if my life is dependent on them—totally unaware of any residue they might leave behind on the fingers my soul.

From what I can tell, the best way to remove any sticky, unwanted residue from my soul is a good soaking in humble dependence on God, who has met my greatest need for salvation, and who is prone to using words such as lavish, immeasurable, far more abundantly, unsearchable riches and filled with all the fullness.

He is more than enough for every emergency I encounter and every gelato I enjoy.

Listening by Shelly Wildman

I’m not always the best listener. Just ask my three daughters. As they were growing up, my girls used to tell me stories that were, well, long. Important parts of their day, to be sure, but after a while my eyes would glaze over and eventually they’d wave their hands in front of my face saying, “Mom, you’re not listening!”

I’ve tried to improve my listening skills over the years, and last spring, God gave me a strange and wonderful opportunity to practice . . . right in the Target parking lot. Looking back, I know this situation was God-ordained, because of several unusual circumstances. 

First, my list—I had ventured into Target needing only three things. Who does that? I usually wait until I need at least ten items before I will walk the miles of aisles in Target. But on this day, I needed only three. 

The second unusual circumstance was that I used the self–checkout, which, again, I hardly ever do. But since I only had three items, I figured, why not?  

And since I was standing at self-checkout, I decided to grab a cup of coffee at Starbucks—another rarity for me. The whole day was getting weird. Yet, stranger still, was the fact that there was nobody to wait on me at the Starbucks. I waited for a minute, yet nobody came to take my order.

Impatient person that I am, I gave up and headed out the door. And here’s how I know my trip to Target was God–ordained. At the precise moment that I walked out the front door, an SUV pulled up at the stop sign to my right and the woman who was driving rolled down her window, looking straight at me, and said, “Could someone please help me? I’m desperate! Please help me!”

I walked over to the passenger side where she had rolled down the window and said, “What’s going on? What do you need?”  

“I need money for gas to get to my mother’s house,” she replied. “I’m in a terrible situation with a man, and I need to get away from here today.” 

“OK,” I tried to be calm. “Where does your mother live?”

She told me the name of a town about two hours from here. I glanced at her gas gauge, just to be sure. It was on empty.

At that moment, I realized I had been given a divine assignment. I reached for my wallet and leafed through some bills (another strange occurrence that day, since I rarely have cash on me), and it was as if God said, “That one. I want you to give her that one.” It would be enough to get her to her mother’s house. 

I handed her the money and something inside me said, “Pray with her.” So I asked, “Can I pray for you?”

“Oh yes, please!” she said.

I reached inside the car to touch her arm, but she grabbed my hand and held on for dear life, agreeing and “amen”-ing with every word I said. When I finished, she said, “Thank you, thank you. You have no idea what this means.”

 I looked down at the seat in front of me and noticed, for the first time, a baby bottle lying right there. “Do you have a child?” I asked.

“Yes,” she replied, pointing to the car seat in the back that I had not even noticed.

I encouraged her to get herself and her child to safety. I asked her name. I told her I would be praying for her. And then I walked away in complete peace. Not shaking. Not crying. Just feeling completely peaceful and calm.

As I drove away I thought about all the unusual circumstances about that Target trip, even down to the fact that not one single car had pulled up to the stop sign during the five minutes that I talked and prayed with this woman. (Have you ever not seen a car at that stop sign?)

I realized that without a doubt God had a job for me to do that day, and I felt grateful, so humbled, that I was able to help her in some small way.

All it took was for me pay attention and to listen.

Sufficient Grace by Wallace Alcorn

At an especially dark moment in what was otherwise a momentous life, the Apostle Paul recognized he was at the end of his usual resources—no answers, no solutions. Just this word from his Creator Redeemer: My grace is all you need at a time like this, because your present weakness allows me the opportunity to apply my omnipotence to its fullest in your present situation (note 2 Corinthians 12:9).

Grace—God's all-sufficient grace—is so beyond our understanding, I cannot define it precisely. We must experience it to understand. It seems to me that grace is when God accomplishes something with no necessary connection between cause and effect, because he is himself the "Sufficient Cause."

Grace is

to be confident in doubt
and secure in turmoil,

to have joy in sorrow
and peace in battle,

to be loved without a lover
and helped without a helper,

to be nourished without food
and assuaged without water,

to believe when doubtful
and trust when suspicious,

to see in the dark
and hear in the din,

to walk straight on a crooked path
and firmly on shifting sand.

Eclipses and Sparrows by Rachel Rim

The universe is vast beyond the stars/But You are mindful when a sparrow falls.
—Fernando Ortega, "Jesus King of Angels"

Six days ago, on August 21, along with millions of other Americans spread across 2,530 miles from coast to coast, I donned funky sunglasses and squinted up. The sky, unnaturally dark for one o’clock in the afternoon, revealed an orange sliver—not the moon, but the sun blocked by the moon. Even though it was a partial and not a full eclipse, it was still an eerily strange phenomenon. As I stared up at the sky (not directly at the eclipse, of course), I thought about the universe—its vastness, how little I understand about it, how small I am by comparison.

Less than twenty-four hours before the solar eclipse, I was walking out of Target with my mom and sister. They paused ahead of me and crouched down beside a parked car. When I reached them, I saw what they were staring at: a tiny sparrow, wings injured, fluttering around in a panic. Its desperation was palpable. Though we tried to coax the bird out from beneath the car (my mom even called over two teenage boys collecting carts to convince them to help), we could do nothing to help. Every time one of us got near the sparrow, it would frantically hop-fly to the other side of the car, staying just out of reach, mistaking our desire to help for malicious intent. There was something profoundly frustrating about wanting to help—being so much bigger, smaller and wiser than the tiny bird—and yet still thwarted by its frantic fear.

The universe is vast beyond the stars/But You are mindful when a sparrow falls.

With every day I wake up in the morning, I grow increasingly convinced that this is one of the central struggles of the Christian—to recognize both our smallness and our significance, to trust not just God’s power but his tenderness. We, too, are sparrows—wounded in our way, trapped beneath hard asphalt and an often frightening world. Sometimes hands meant to heal come too close, and we flit away because vulnerability is just as terrifying as suffering. Sometimes we would rather stay trapped beneath the car because the universe is vast beyond the stars, and hurricanes hit and racism seems to have an infinite number of lives and our own selfishness is as formidable a trap as the underbelly of a car is to a sparrow. Solar eclipses and solar engines; dark skies and darker selves. It’s difficult to know where to turn, where to look in the sky, which direction to run.

Yet we run to him. To the one who owns the vastness of the universe and yet condescends to know the pain of the sparrow. To the one whose power is beyond our understanding, but so also is his tenderness, and as the philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff writes, “perhaps his sorrow is splendor.” The Christ who bridges polarities, who reconciles paradoxes, whose sorrow is splendor, is a Christ we can trust.

He creates eclipses and sparrows, and we are safe in his hands.