Inhale.  Notice your response to the flow of air.  Do you detect any particular fragrance?  If not, just appreciate the sensational gift of breath.  But if there is "something" in the air, take a moment to consider your response to that something.

Your sense of smell provides a foreshadowing of the place, situation, or person you are approaching.  Depending upon the source, the fragrance can attract or repel. Smell lavender or mint drying in the sun and you may seek it to collect for your own aroma therapy.

 Get a waft of death in the air and you will most likely try to walk around it or if it is near your space you will try to eliminate the source. Aromas can indicate toxicity, illness, and trouble of all sorts.

If you linger in a  place that is saturated with a particular odor, you may absorb the chemicals in the air and then carry that same odor to other places yourself.  (Think of how your clothing reveals the restaurant or kitchen you have occupied -- or think of how your face or hair may smell like another person with whom you have been up close and personal.)

St. Paul appeals to our sense of smell as he describes the impact the child of God can have on his/her surroundings.  When we are saturated with God's love in Christ, we walk through time and space emitting something like an aroma that will both soothe and attract others -- not to us, but to Christ.

What do you foreshadow?  What do you leave behind?  Are your words and deeds saturated love and life and hope and peace and justice and compassion?  Or is there something else in which you have been steeping?

I have been told that we become accustomed to our environment so that we are less likely to notice pleasant or foul odors. If that is true, it is helpful to ask somebody new to our scene for their "sense" what is going on. I have been told, also, that a newcomer to a congregation (or any other space) can literally "smell" conflict or spiritual lethargy, as well as joy and the warm welcome of Christ's love.  

Take a whiff. Something to think about, right?

image source:  http://goeshealth.com/world-health/aromatherapy-effects.html