Sweetness in the air.
My walk this morning could hardly have been more perfect. The sun was behind clouds so it was not in my eyes but yet lent its light to the day. The air was cool enough to require a sweatshirt and there was a small, quiet breeze. As I walked by different flowers and plants, their scents would float around me. There was a sweetness in the air.
Thinking of that phrase, I began to list things that put sweetness in the air.
Rosebushes
Orange blossoms
Lilacs
Hay
Grass
Rain
Music
Sauteing garlic and onions
Baking
Ocean
Singing
Two things that occurred to me would not typically come under “sweetness,” but just a whiff, a tiny hint, of cigarette smoke evokes good memories for me. Most of my friends started smoking while we were in high school, a mournful thing, to be sure. But when I catch a tiny whiff of cigarette smoke, it triggers memories of fun times with my friends. Similarly, a little whiff of manure in the air gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling, in the same way that seeing black & white cows does. They remind me of driving into Lynden, WA, to visit my grandma, aunts, uncles, and cousins when I was growing up.
How about you? What do you experience as sweetness in the air?
I thought, too, about sacrifices in Old Testament times. Burnt sacrifices were an offering to God. The smoke rising was symbolic of the offering rising to God and there was reference to it being “a pleasing aroma to the Lord” (Leviticus 1:9). That reminded me of a creation story in the Chronicles of Narnia. In The Magician’s Nephew, there is the story of “The Founding of Narnia.”
When they first arrive in a new world, the humans are in utter darkness and hear a song, “Its lower notes were deep enough to be the voice of the earth herself. There were no words. There was hardly even a tune. But it was, beyond comparison, the most beautiful noise they had ever heard. It was so beautiful they could hardly bear it.” As light slowly dawned, they saw it was a lion, Aslan, singing, and his singing created the world -- plants, animals, everything. Wherever Aslan walked and sang, creation sprang up. The earth was so full of life that even a lantern pole the witch threw grew out of the ground, the way a tree does.
And that makes me think of the Cat Stephens song, “Morning Has Broken.”
Morning has broken like the first morning
Blackbird has spoken like the first bird
Praise for the singing
Praise for the morning
Praise for them springing fresh from the Word
Sweet the rain's new fall, sunlit from heaven
Like the first dewfall on the first grass
Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden
Sprung in completeness where His feet pass.
There are sad, heavy, terrible things in the world, it is true. We mourn and pray about these things. We do what we can to help. And yet. And yet. And yet...there is beauty, and truth, and love in the world. There is sweetness in the air.
Praise God for his love that is in and through and around us, like sweetness in the air. May you breathe in and be filled with his love.