Just a thought:

Have you ever been around a lot of smokers, gone home and gone to bed and then woke up the next morning to your hair smelling like you have that “pig pen” cloud around your head.  It is like a smoky halo.

Mexican restaurants also tend to leave an aroma in our hair that will linger for days.  The smoky halo and the “refried bean overcoat” will gladly share their smell with sheets, cars, and whole closets if given full sway in our lives.  They are so not stingy with their fragrance.

I once witnessed someone dousing their hands with hand-sanitizer and then rubbing it through their hair after they had their smoke break.  Let me just tell you that “hand-sanitizer shampoo” does not remove the Marlboro, Carlton or Camel perfume.

(Side-note: Please don’t receive this as a smoker-bashing session.  I had a season in my life where I too dawned the “smoky aura.”  I love the smokers but I have to say I hate the pesky little devil called “smoke.”  Smoking ultimately caused my momma’s death, making me wish that “the habit of smoking would get cancer and die!”  I pulled and edited that powerful quote from a St. Jude page, a child saying, “I wish cancer would get cancer and die!”)

So why all the smelly hair talk?

When I think of Mary of Bethany, sitting at the feet of Jesus, weeping, pouring out her precious perfume and wiping it up with her long hair, I can’t help but think of what her hair must have smelled like.

Our hair clearly holds odors, bad and good.  Lavender, eucalyptus and peppermint are some of my favorite essential oil smells.  Can’t you just smell them and think how they would linger in your hair after a good scalp massage?

Mary’s hair and Jesus would have literally drawn a crowd, leaning in just to smell them, more than a couch smothered in F’breeze.   Some odors repel, but some “compel.”  I actually lean back when confronted with smoke or refried beans, but I can’t help but lean in when the essential oils come out. They compel me by saying, “Come hither.”

I don’t think Mary of Bethany gave any thought to being used by Jesus.  I believe she was obsessed with being close to HIM.  She was so consumed with “Closeness to Christ” that she busted into a man-party, uninvited, and collapsed at the feet of the One who captivated her heart.  She was unashamed to give HIM everything and she didn’t care who saw.  I think as far as she was concerned, no one was in that room but her and Jesus. Would we do that?  I hope that I would.

I bet she carried the aroma of Christ in her hair for days.   Jesus would have smelled a thousand times better than Polo, Gucci, or Dior and so did Mary’s hair.

…”For when she poured this perfume on My body, she did it to prepare Me for burial. “Truly I say to you, wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be spoken of in memory of her.” (Matthew 26:12-13)

Because Mary was consumed with being close to Jesus instead of being used by Jesus, she carries “the aroma of Christ” in her hair to the world wherever the gospel is preached.

 Christ chooses to use those who simply choose to be close to HIM!

What does our hair smell like?

Happy Sunday!

GoGod