Smells Good Stick

I was doing my laundry at my dad and Barb’s house last week and we were all sitting in the kitchen.  I was at the kitchen table and they were both sitting at the counter.  We were chatting, but at some point my dad got tired of the fact that both Barb and I were on our phones, and he made like he was going to get up and leave.

“No, wait,” I said.  “I’m done.  I was just taking a picture of your lovely centerpiece,” and I waved my hand across the table.

Now I admit to exaggerating slightly, but both of them looked at me like I had lost my mind.

And for a second, I doubted myself.  Had I used the wrong word, centerpiece?

So, I pointed.  “You know your flower vase … sitting here … in the center of the table.”

“It’s a vase filled with fake dead flowers,” Barb said.

“If you think it’s ugly,” I argued, “why do you have it out?”

She shrugged.  “Something needed to go there.”

“Well let me explain what I saw.”

You see, it had been cloudy all morning and threatening rain, but for just a moment, the sun broke through the clouds and this one skinny beam of light appeared, first falling on the cat, curled up and sleeping under the window and then the kitchen table, hitting the flower vase, so that shadows of the flowers appeared on the table.  I took out my phone, set it to portrait mode because everything looks fancier in portrait mode as it blurs the background to create the illusion of depth of field, and I propped my phone up on the table so that it was level with the vase … and I took the picture.

I sent the picture then to both my dad and Barb to show them what I had seen, and they conceded that it did look nice. 

“Artsy,” my dad said, “still-life of flowers.”

I think one of the most important things we can do every day is find beauty in the ugly.

For the past few weeks, we have been following (in our Old Testament readings) the journey of the Israelites after leaving Egypt.  The Israelites are the heroes in the Bible.  We want to root for them, but, my goodness, they can be a difficult people to love.  They complain a lot.  They’re very immature.  And they are at times, what my southern grandmother would call, flat out ugly.  That’s an ugly on the inside.

And yet, God never abandons them.  There are times when you just know God is closing His eyes and counting to ten to keep Himself from losing it with them.

But He continues to fight for them.  Continues to protect them.  He does this out of love and because I believe that God looks at us all, even during our ugliest times and sees us as He made us, something that is beautiful beyond imagination.  He knows us not as what we could be, but what we already are, deep within our spirits.  We are creatures of love and beauty.  We are reflections of the most High.  We look our best when we stand in His light.  Like that flower vase my step-mother placed on the kitchen table.  We need a certain slant of light, as poet Emily Dickinson once wrote, to see things the way they truly are.

We need God’s light.

Last week, a little girl knocked on my door.

I opened it and she held up two sticks (one in each hand) to me. 

“Do you want a smells-good-stick?” she asked me. 

I stared at her for a moment, trying to figure out just what she was offering.  Each stick had what appeared to be a chewed up wad of gum on the end or perhaps a sampling from the Horror movie “The Blob.”

“Three dollars,” the girl added.

She could tell she was having a hard time with the sell, so she offered me one of the sticks.  “Here smell.”

What else is there to do in this moment but smell the stick?  So, I did and that’s when I realized the glob at the end was neither chewing gum nor an alien blob.  It was some melted candle wax.  And honestly, the smell was not displeasing.  It reminded me of childhood.

“I’m sorry,” I said to the girl, “but I don’t have any money to give you.”

She smiled.  “That’s okay.  Just keep it.”

“Really?” I said, smiling myself.  “For free?”

She nodded.

“Thank you,” I said and meant it.

The smells-good-stick is currently sitting in a plastic baggie in my closet and let me tell you the closet smells wonderful.  And every time I open the closet door, and catch a whiff of my smells-good-stick, I am reminded of the gift that little girl gave me.

She gave me a glimpse of God’s light.

Amen.