Of Rotting and Stenches.

We sure do practice a lot. We're very adept at what we do. Whether we're running at full-speed away from the wafting fumes, or dumping pungent perfumes to drown the overwhelming stink, we're fantastic smell-avoiders. If we don't notice that everything around us is reeking of malodorous rotting stench, it must not be all that bad.

But it is.

This world is rotten. No good. Broccoli-in-cheese-sauce-found-in-the-back-of-the-unplugged-refrigerator no good. Famine and plague and sickness and death no good. And, though we try our very hardest, we are inevitably overcome by the very things we've strived to ignore. This close-at-hand sensory realization burns our nostrils, and stings our eyes, and grips our hearts so forcibly that tears are squeezed out – and with them, a little piece of ourselves. Even when we think we've picked ourselves up and Febreze-d away every lingering hint of sub-utopia, the imprint of that iron fist on our hearts sends us shuddering to our knees once again.


It's hard to want to function among the rotten. It's enticing to lie still with the compost, slowly settling into a slimy oblivion that neither requires moving forward nor backward. To choose to become silent, because there's nothing to be said that makes it better or good or even okay. To burrow beneath the muck, because things can't possibly get worse when they're already at their worst. To give up all hope, because all that's left to strive for is rotten and corrupt anyway.

But it isn't.

There's a Plan B. A new head of broccoli that doesn't need refrigeration to stay happy and healthy and whole (and it's perfect; it even tastes too good to be doused in cheese sauce). A Febreze-less, sweetly scented place that needs neither Usain Bolt-ing nor eye-watering amounts of Calvin Klein cologne. Another world that hasn't a hint of rot or corruption.

And so, keep blooming – even in the midst of a rotten landfill. The fragrance of one flower might not be enough to undo a world history of rot, but it is just enough to remind someone that there are good smells, and good things, yet to be had. For that which is corruptible will put on incorruptibility; that which is rotten will be forever Snuggle-fresh; and we shall soon proclaim that Death has been swallowed up in victory.
Hallelujah, hallelujah – Death, too, will die.

Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, 

knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord.

 (I Cor. 15:58, NASV)