Julie Lavender

CONSIDER THE LAVENDER
by Julie Lavender

My walk with God this week took me to Black Mountain, North Carolina, where I quite deliberately walked past shrubs of lavender plants. The piney floral scent enveloped me and made me smile.

Partial to Purple

You see, I’m kinda partial to the lavender herb (and, quite honestly, anything purple since the day I fell in love with my sweetie and ultimately took his last name).

  

Lavender sightings

Typically, lavender doesn’t grow in the deep-south where I live, so, any occasion to be in its presence is pleasing to me. For two-and a-half-years, Uncle Sam paid my husband’s salary in the Pacific Northwest, and we were treated to lavender sightings and scents often.

In fact, because of our surname, most every bathroom in our tiny base homes contained varying scents of lavender décor, from the hand soap to the potpourri bowls to the body wash to the aerosols.

Lavender festival and

a nine-year-old

So much so that when we took a family trip to a lavender festival in Sequim, Washington and I offered my little ones an entre of poulet au citron et lavande and lavender lemonade, they turned up their noses and the nine-year-old said, “This tastes like our bathroom.”

Not really what you want the vendor nor his customers to hear at a lavender festival!

Powerful aroma 

Yet, I understood exactly what he meant! The sense of smell is powerful. It can overtake the sense of taste, and regardless of how yummy the chicken tasted, to my children, that lavender scent just reminded them of the times they actually remembered to use soap when I sent them to the bathroom to wash their hands!

The scent of lavender on my walk in Black Mountain conjures memories of sweet times with my kids in Washington state, watching them run through the back yard playing some imaginary game my oldest had created that took them traipsing through lavender bushes, and their footprints danced on my heart and rose aromatic to my nostrils.

Second Corinthians 2:14-15, from the Message translation, says, 

“Everywhere we go, people breathe in the exquisite fragrance. Because of Christ, we give off a sweet scent rising to God, which is recognized by those on the way of salvation – an aroma redolent with life.”

My Lavender fragrance

My last name is a constant reminder to me that I am commanded to be the aroma of Christ. That I should exude an exquisite fragrance that points others to the way of salvation and a scent that rises to God, pleasing Him with my every action and my every word. 

I’m God’s Lavender girl, according to my marriage certificate, but I hope I’m the aroma of Christ in more than name only.

The aroma of Christ 

Until we meet again, lavender

And until my next trip farther north than my hometown, I’ll just have to enjoy the lavender potpourri leftover from my daughter’s wedding that still causes my eyes to leak or the lavender-scented dryer sheets that permeate the laundry room with memories.

What about you? Is there a scent in God's creations that reminds you to be the aroma of Jesus? Will you tell me about that scent below?