“Where has your beloved gone, most beautiful of women? Which way did your beloved turn, that we may look for him with you?
My beloved has gone down to his garden, to the beds of spices, to browse in the gardens and to gather lilies.” (Song of Solomon 6:1,2, NIV)
In recent response to a friend’s “How are you?”, I went for the deep answer. “Well, I really want to see resurrection power, so that means I have to smell death.” Boom. Stinky. Thankfully, the friend wasn’t scared away.
Later, I got to muzing in one of those mystic moments when you’re in a couple of worlds at the same time… … Spices… My Beloved was liberally covered in spices after He “gave up His spirit.”
“…Joseph of Arimathea … came and took the body away. He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds. Taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen…” (John 19:38-40, NIV)
Yes, I smell Him! Wrapped and drenched in REAL cologne. No modern day chemical smell-alikes, but full-bodied, robust earth-incense, deeply penetrating the senses.
I see Him! Drenched in 75 pounds of fragrance, throwing open the gates of hell, myrrh wafting through the dank darkness, causing even the dead to catch the aromatic breeze of imminent resurrection power.
“For Christ also suffered once for sins, … being put to death in the flesh but made alive by the Spirit, by whom also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, who formerly were disobedient, when once the Divine longsuffering waited in the days of Noah…” (1 Peter 3:18-20, NKJ) “When He ascended on high, He led captivity captive …” (Ephesians 4:8)
“Having disarmed principalities and powers, He made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it.” (Colossians 2:15, NKJ)
This image of our ultimate Super-Man robbing death, saturated in spices, begins to settle in and on me. Myrrh relaxes my spiritual senses, along with my anxiety over the deaths I now see in action. My own disappointed dreams. Days, months, years slipping away without the fruitfulness I know God has for me. Tension in relationships between people I love…
And the wafting spices say, “Death need not smell of decay. He has overcome. Let Him anoint you while you lie wrapped in your tomb. Let Him preserve you. Surrender to your Beloved, who wore cologne into hell and spread it onto all He embraced there. He is overcoming, even before the tomb erupts.”
Let that sink in on you for a moment. Let yourself muse…
Come to me, my Beloved. Anoint me in all that transpires between the deaths and resurrections I experience. Let me smell of You, even in the waiting. Let me come perfumed with You into hells, watch the chains of captives fall, and lock eyes with You at the dance on the day of the victory parade.