His Fragrance

This is my favorite time of year!  Oh, how I love the crisp air, brilliantly colored leaves, the aroma of spiced apples … ok, I’ll stop!  I can hardly wait to enjoy a cup of French  vanilla coffee in my newly painted deep-red porch swing – “thank you, Mr. Bill.”  As I thought of the sweet smells of the season, I remembered the following passage.  May it inspire you to spend more time in God’s Presence – absorb and share His Fragrance.

 

“In the Company of Roses” by Henry Gariepy

"Roses are grown for the Vienna market in great profusion and with much distillation of fragrance. We are told that if you were to visit that valley at the time of the rose crop, wherever you would go the rest of the day, the fragrance you would carry with you would betray where you had been.  There is a beautiful parable given to us by the Persian poet and moralist, Saadi. The poet was given a bit of ordinary clay. The clay was so redolent with sweet perfume that its fragrance filled all the room.  'What are you, musk or ambergris?' he questioned. 'I am neither,' it answered. 'I am just a bit of common clay.' 'From where then do you have this rare perfume?' the poet asked. 'I have companied all the summer with a rose,' it replied.  We are just bits of the common clay of humanity. But if we company with The One Who is the Rose of Sharon ... something of the Fragrance of His life will pass into ours. Then we will be a refreshing and a sweetening influence to the world around us."