Walmart has a coffee aisle. It is practically a coffee lover's paradise in the middle of the grocery store. Every once in awhile you would see random people bend over to smell the individual aromas. Awkward, right? I'm one of them. I love the coffee aisle. The smells, the robust aroma's of whole bean coffee: it's all so wonderful.
I found that I became true coffee lover when I took a whiff of a bean called foglifter. No. It wasn't delicious. In fact it smelled just like it sounded. It smelled like a dank northern fog at 8:30 in the morning. It would not find itself in my cup of coffee. In fact that day I proceeded to smell up close and personal each coffee bean that was availible there. To my surprise out of eight I only liked two. Vanilla and A Hazelnut blend. I've never been a picky person, up until now. My guess is that it happens when you find the one flavorful good thing that just changes your world. I don't know what it was for me. I know it was just things that I would not eat. Those things that did not smell quite good.
It has everything to do with your senses. Not too long ago I read a book called "The Shack" It was very good. A friend in Bible college recommended it. He said it made him look closer at the things in christianity that we take for granted. The biggest thing I got out of it was creation. By creation I mean full force creation starting at your senses.
I am a preschool teacher at our church. Just recently we finished a section on God created me. My favorite lesson was the one about senses. We played with it all, touch, sight, sound, smell, and taste. We felt ridges on rocks and the smooth underside of a leaf we used sound to recognize the voices of our friends and smell to sniff candles and scents. And taste....well, taste was snack time and I can't be sure if the children actually tasted their food as it skipped their tongue to plop into their hungry bellies.
Taste is my favorite sense. Taste is the pinnacle of all the other senses because it involves the other senses. You smell it and touch it( Especially if it's spaghetti!) You see it and if your momma cooked it, you hear it crackling and spiffing on the stove. Then finally, lastly, comes the taste. It's a culmination of all the other senses. Try eating food when your nose is stuffed. Everything is bland and lacks color so to speak. There was one week that I became very sick in college. My mother came up to see me. She also brought a whole chicken and broth and vegetables to make chicken soup. My nose was stuffed and I had that sickly feeling in the back of my throat. So eating the chicken soup was not the best experience. I was grateful for Mother's love and kindness but I just could not bring myself to eat it. It stayed in my fridge for the next month until I finally tossed with the garbage. I won't eat chicken soup now, all because I was sick when I ate it and all I can remember is that sickly feeling in the back of my throat. Mother's cooking is great, there's flavor and balance and it's just wonderful, even her chickens soup. But I can't eat it.
In the shack, the author portrayed the Holy Spirit as a seemingly sporadic happy being that loved to grow her garden in fractals. A fractal is a complex design that makes no sense at all but stepping back it makes perfect sense. Chris told me that I am, act like and would love fractals. I agreed with him. The book led me to think that God's creation is a fractal...I mean do yo know how messy the rainforest looks when you're on the ground? All those vines random spots for trees, even our forest here. Oh, and the ultimate example ... us. Women seem to be notorious for being a fractal. Men are just as fractal as we women are. And it's beautiful. Senses are fractal on a small scale.
I went to a candle party last weekend. The hostess had a basket of candles on the middle of the floor. My friends and I smelled each scent at least five times. It was crazy fun. But all those smells together were overwhelming. When we left I felt that my nose was intoxicated from so many smells, like it was hyped on caffeine. Each smell was unique and lovely. Some were down right awkward, but I still loved to smell them.
God gave us senses to enjoy his world. Like enjoying a cup of coffee takes at the very least a good 45 minutes ( 30 in the winter) Enjoying God's creation takes one moment of every chance you get. Slow and steady, don't rush by it, don't ignore it, or don't bypass it with an unseeing eye. Stop and look. It makes me smile, just like a big hug from the Father himself. There's a reason why God gave us senses.
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