Unashamedly and without hesitation, my wife uses essential oils. To support herself, me, our home, and our one-year-old child. (We can debate the benefits, or lack there of, around using essential oils at another time.) To our benefit, my wife has given our family the gift of aroma in our home. It’s actually quite pleasant and peaceful. In fact, while I was talking to one of the people who volunteers in the nursery, she told me that she knew when my son was being dropped off because she could smell the aroma of essential oils.
Lately I’ve been thinking about the influence of incense. We see the scriptures refer to our prayers being like sweet incense to the nostrils of God. We see the use of incense in the tabernacle and the temple in the old testament. Everything in the temple was designed to be beautiful and to remind God’s people of what life was like before the fall of human beings, to remind them of how beautiful God’s creation was in Eden. It was decorated with fruit trees, gold, and statues of angels, and it had burning incense.
When Jesus came and dwelt among us, he embodied the presence of God, because he was God. He took the presence of God outside of the temple and he “tabernacled” among his people. Jesus went about proclaiming that the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand. The true king of Israel had arrived in the messiah, Jesus, and he was enacting the will of God in the world. Jesus was the first one to pray and live out the words, “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in Heaven." This would become one of the greatest prayers of the future church.
Wherever Jesus walked, he connected the dimensions of Heaven and Earth. He left an imprint of heaven everywhere he went, the power of God's Kingdom lingering among all who had been near him.
As the Holy Spirit dwells in us, he mysteriously gifts us with the presence of God. As people who follow Jesus, we have the responsibility to embody the kingdom of God, to carry the aroma of Heaven with us wherever we go. We should emit the distinct smell of Heaven in our day-to-day lives. Wherever there is sin, injustice, hate, fear, or anything that contradicts the nature of God’s kingdom — the nature of Eden — we are to enact the will of God. We are to embody justice, goodness, forgiveness, joy, and love.
“Your kingdom come, your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.”
To worship God in a temple is not enough. We are called to worship in spirit and in truth, to be temple in our world. That means that we are to worship through our actions. We are to worship through the way we embody the kingdom of God here on earth. The sweet incense of worship to God is not solely a matter of preaching good words and singing good songs (both of which I love to do), it is a matter of enacting faith, hope, and love to a world that is yet to be aware of the Lordship of Jesus.
Wherever we go, we should carry with us the sweet aroma of Heaven, drawing others nearer to Jesus. The aroma, though already an amazing gift, is just a prelude to the fullness of his Kingdom to come.
Where we go, the Spirit goes also.
Lane
lanegp@b4church.org
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