The Fragrance

Just back from a trip to the US and, therefore, an absence at the hospital to pray miraculous healing over Andrew (why think less?). So I went up yesterday and Andrew's Mom immediately started talking about the last week and how hard it was for all of them. I could smell a fragrance, a purity, a beauty as she talked. I was drawn to her words and her eyes and I could feel the heart of God as I listened to the heart of this Mother.

I do not understand it, but there is something beautiful in the crushing, the breaking, the suffering of the saints. It releases a fragrance that, once breathed, begins to heal all that is inside us. Suffering crushes the flesh, the self-will, the independence, the unbelief and faithlessness. It moves us from a place of "I will" to "God will".

I told Andrew's Mom that she would never be the same after this. You know how we sometimes say in a radical Holy Spirit service that we will never be the same again? Same goes for this kind of radical Holy Spirit service. I told her she had the beauty and attractiveness of Christ. His gentleness, peace and quiet determined faith.

Don't let me mislead you, she was not talking about suffering and defeat. She was talking about suffering and victory. About overcoming the impossible, the evident, the natural. About overcoming her own fear and faithlessness. But she wasn't braggadocio about it, she was fragrant, soft, crushed, releasing pure words of life. Just matter of fact: despite all the suffering God was going to heal her son.

When I told her she was Christlike she said that a lot of people were telling her that lately. A lot of non-believers, doctors, nurses. One even told her she released a fragrance, not knowing he was speaking the words of God. And then she said a surprising thing. She said it was Christ people were seeing and smelling, not her. That's what we always say, isn't it? It's Christ in me.

So I told her she was wrong. I told her it was her that people were seeing. Sure it was Christ but it was her becoming more Christ-like. That's what being transformed means. We're not just dirty vessels with a clean Jesus in us, we're increasingly clean vessels with the nature of Christ replacing ours. We're who we were meant to be, at long last.

She seemed to have some trouble with that but it's OK. Anyone who smells that good doesn't need my help with semantics. Maybe it's better that she doesn't know she looks, smells and feels a whole lot like Jesus and that day by day she's being transformed into his likeness.

What a wonderful God.

Pa