Your robes are all fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia. From ivory palaces stringed instruments make you glad. —Psalm 45:8 (esv)
My son Solomon doesn’t care about the clothes he wears. No matter the occasion, he puts on whatever is on top in his dresser drawer. A few times a year, he happens to get dressed in his younger brother’s clothes that were put in his dresser by mistake. There’s a four-year gap between them, so when Solomon comes from his room, wearing Henry’s very small clothes, it’s an obvious error. “Wrong pants, Sol,” I say. “Those are Henry’s.” “They were in my dresser,” he says. “How was I supposed to know they weren’t mine?”
So today when Solomon put on his shirt and smelled his arm, I was more than a little surprised by his reaction. “Mmm,” he said, holding the crook of his elbow to his nose. “This smells so good! Mom, smell this.”
He held out his arm and walked toward me. As I leaned in and took a whiff, Solomon said, “How’d you make it smell so good? How did you make it smell like Cape Cod?”
“It’s from being on the clothesline,” I said. “Yesterday was like spring, so I hung the clothes on the line outside.”
Solomon smelled his arm again. “It’s unbelievable,” he said. “It’s just like being on vacation. Dad, come here. You won’t believe this. Smell. My shirt smells just like the ocean.”
Dear Lord, thank You for the gift of a spring day that commands our attention and makes us say, “Mmm.”
Written by Sabra Ciancanelli
Digging Deeper: Lk11:13; Jas 1:17
