There’s this smell that has been in my kitchen for the last week. It’s not one of those where you can go, “Oh, that’s a little funky,” and then move on with your day. No, this is the kind where you walk in, it hits you in the face and you go, “Where, and dear Lord WHY is that emanating from my kitchen?” So yesterday, I spent the vast majority of the day sniffing every square inch of every appliance, cabinet, and floor space to try to find this oh-so-delightful odor. I pulled out the refrigerator, I pulled out the oven, took the burners off and cleaned out underneath them--I scrubbed the crap out of everything. Needless to say, my kitchen is very clean now, and unfortunately, very unfortunately indeed, the smell still remains. Now it’s not as bad as it was to begin with. It doesn’t feel like there’s an unpleasant wild animal taking up residence with its pungent stench in your nostrils anymore, but it’s still there. Like the annoying passive aggressive sibling who’s sitting next to you on the ten hour long road trip saying, “I’m not touching you, see? I’m not touching you!!!”

At first, this annoyed me and currently, as I think about the stench, it still annoys me. Second, as I’ve done in the past, I began to think about how this applies to our spiritual lives. Smelly kitchens and spiritual lives? It might seem like a bit of a stretch. Maybe it is, but bear with me here. This frustrating and psychotic scrubbing inducing stench made me begin to question, how many times have we had something in our lives with Christ that “smells” and we just ignore it? Or how many times have we thought that we could make ourselves “clean” enough to be alright with God? “Yeah, I’m checking box a, b, and c, so God must be pretty pleased with me.” Or on the flip-side, “I didn’t do a, b, or c today, so God must be pretty unhappy with me right now.”

Going back to the original question, of allowing a “smell” to seep into our spiritual walk; I started thinking about how we slowly let things that shouldn’t necessarily be part of our lives, become “not a big deal,” or something we’ll “deal with later.” How easy is it to ignore the prompting of the Holy Spirit so that we can continue on with our day uninterrupted, or to be passive, or overly aggressive, or insensitive, or whatever it is that manifests itself as a “smell” in your life?

“Bind my wandering heart to Thee,” is a phrase that has been resonating and echoing in my heart over and over again these past months because it’s now more than ever that I’ve realized my heart wanders far, and it wanders fast. The passage that came to mind when I was thinking about all of this was Proverbs 4:23, “Keep your heart with all vigilance; for from it flow the springs of life.” But then I read through all of Proverbs 4 and realized the whole chapter is pretty nifty and in line with what we’re talking about here, so we’ll go through Proverbs 4:20-27:“My son, be attentive to my words; incline your ear to my sayings. Let them not escape from your sight; keep them within your heart. For they are life to him who finds them, and healing to all his flesh. Keep your heart with all vigilance; for from it flows the springs of life. Put away from you crooked speech, and put devious talk far from you. Let your eyes look directly forward, and your gaze be straight before you. Take heed to the path of your feet, then all your ways will be sure. Do not swerve to the right or to the left; turn your foot away from evil.”

Not in a legalistic, “are you being good enough,” kind of way, but “are we intentionally submitting ourselves to Christ in every, way, shape and form?” kind of way. Has there been something that you’ve maybe ignored for a bit too long either in an effort to maintain a front of being well, or something you just haven’t had the gumption to interact with because it feels hopeless? The other day I was talking with someone who’s been pretty influential in helping me heal from past hurts, and we were talking about why I wasn’t thrilled to be at my current job still. So as the conversation went on I said, “Well, I guess I just feel stuck.” To which my wise sage of a friend responded, “You don’t have to be there anymore if you don’t want to be.” It seems simple right? On top of that being an uncomfortable thing to think about, I was also slapped in the face with the reality of our involvement with our state of either wellbeing, or lack of wellbeing. In the same way, when it comes to our spiritual lives, I’ve heard people talk about how they “feel stuck,” or “feel like God is distant, or uninterested, etc,” but what we neglect to do when we base everything off of how we might feel in that present state, is to take responsibility for our own engagement in the situation.

The Psalmist in the verses that we read before used language that indicates an active decision to either remain on the straight path, keep our hearts from evil, keep our mouths from running away from us, “be attentive” to the words of the Psalmist or keep from swerving to the right or to the left. It’s an active and intensely intentional decision for the subject of the text to be mindfully fighting against the battering of life that either draws you closer to God, or places you in a dejected state of feeling “stuck,” or “defeated.”

Now onward toward the second point of “smells,” being “smelly” and thinking we can, in and of ourselves, do something to make ourselves less pungent in the presence of God. Back to the kitchen dilemma. Here we are, post-scrubbing, post-neurotic flailing about with a mop, and I have come to find that my house is still unpleasantly odiferous. Again, that got me to thinking.

David in Psalm 51:1-4 after his blunder of sleeping with a married woman and then having her husband murdered (kind of a big deal), doesn’t realize his sin and then turn to himself to try and wash away all that he had done. Instead he deliberately went to God pleading, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin! For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you may be justified in your words and blameless in your judgement.” David did a couple of things here. To begin with, he addresses God and doesn’t ignore him or run from him even though his actions could have very well led him to a state of intense shame and isolation. He also, realized that it was God alone that could cleanse him from his sin. It wasn’t any amount of “scrubbing,” or “sanitizing” that could restore him in the sight of God.

So that led me to wonder, how often do we try to sanitize ourselves before God, instead of going directly to the source? He is the only one able to atone for our iniquities, he is the only one who can bring restoration to the human soul, and he is the only one who will be able to completely and absolutely remove the lingering and unpleasant “smells” from our lives.