What Smells So Good?

My husband has been chopping a cedar stump from our yard. A tree had been cut down years ago, and later sawed close to the ground, but it still interferes with his lawn mowing. The tree had divided into three trunks, and I didn’t even realize the dead, grey, wood jutting up was cedar until I saw the reddish color exposed by the axe and caught a whiff of its unmistakable fragrance. “Cedar!” I exclaimed, as I breathed deeply of the scented air. It was as if I’d opened the cedar chest we used to have that held our family’s memory-laden garments.

I never thought cedar trees were particularly pretty, especially when they had grown old and gnarled with their dark, dense greenery. But last winter I needed some evergreens for an arrangement, and lacking the lush, long-needled pines we had in Mississippi, I tugged at a branch from an ancient cedar at our fence line and broke off a few fronds. They were beautiful up close! Their delicate, flat, lacey patterns were perfect in my garden wagon filled with pinecones on the porch.

The cedar tree figures prominently in the Bible, mentioned 75 times in scripture. It was considered very desirable for building, especially for the strong ceiling beams supporting structures meant to last for generations. Both Solomon’s temple and the one that followed were built with cedars from Lebanon. Cedars were also valued for their aromatic fragrance.

II Corinthians 2:15 says, “For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing.” Paul admonishes us to “Walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor,” Ephesians 5:2.

One of the household tips I was reading in the ubiquitous organizational article in a magazine was how to refresh a cedar chest that had lost its fragrance. The author suggested lightly sanding the surface of the inside of the chest to release the lovely smell. Not bad advice for Christians who have lost some of their sweetness: we need to ask God to brush away some of our hardened exterior and draw us closely to Himself so that we may once again be “the fragrance of Christ.” How wonderful if a memory of us after we are gone evokes "a sweet-smelling savor", like the aromatic old cedar.