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Enjoy Life, Enjoy God


Dale Patterson

PLEASING AROMA

July 29, 2009

 I love the smell of basil stirred into a saute just finishing a dish I cooked. Or I top off a mushroom risotto with parmigiano reggiano and butter, and pour it out onto a hot platter. That is a heavenly whiff.

This will be a food offering, an aroma pleasing to the Lord.
-Number 15:10 TNIV

In Numbers 15 a whole series of offerings and sacrifices are prescribed. Goats, sheep, grain, olive oil--all offered not for God's needs, but the people's. They are based on something scholars call anthropomorphisms (human-form). In other words, we humans need to think of our God in categories we understand, but that does not mean God is human. Back to aromas! We know that God's need for aromas pleasing is an anthropomorphism. God has no need of goat smoke or barrels of olive oil, but we do.

It is a pleasant smell in God's nostrils when faithful followers live Christ-centered lives. The offering that pleases God, the delightful smell, is our lives given unto the Lord in faithfulness. Such offerings are not for God, but for us. God needs no such reminders, but we do. Such pleasant aromas are less for God, and more about us.
Joyfully,

Dale Patterson