A Fragrant Offering

Your love, oh Lord, reaches to the heavens / Your faithfulness, stretches to the sky / Your righteousness, is like the mighty mountains / Your justice flows like the ocean's tide / I will lift my voice to worship You, my King / I will find my strength in the shadow of your wings

As I drove into work this morning, this Third Day song from Psalms 36/37 that was part of my QT this morning sang on repeat in my head. All I wanted was to have breakfast to catch up with a friend of mine this morning, but she challenged me to wake up early to go to mp with her beforehand. It ended up being a SUPER amazing morning, with both God and with my friend.

I'm by NO means a morning person, and if you've been my roommate in the past, you'll be able to testify to how inhumanely grumpy I am in the mornings when I wake up, especially when it's an early kind of morning. This is why being at mp with a heart of privilege and thanksgiving has always been a big big challenge for me. But today, despite my exhaustion and tiredness (and cold-ness since the crisp michigan fall mornings have turned to frosty wintery mornings already), it was just a morning filled with God's presence and power. As I rolled into work this morning, I just feel like I have this sense of uncontainable joy and almost feeling confidently invincible... not by my own strength though, but God's strength working within me. I was just filled with this overwhelming sense of awe of who God is and how faithful he has been in my life and the lives of others around me. "How priceless is your unfailing love!" (Ps 36:7)

One thing this friend shared with me over breakfast was the image of being a "fragrant offering". As we talked and tried to figure out what it really means to live a life that is a fragrant offering (Eph 5:1-2), the image of a glass jar that has been filled with a fragrant aroma that is shattered into many pieces refracting the light that shines on it came to mind, and that aroma once the jar is shattered just diffuses boundlessly. What a beautiful image to strive towards in our brokenness! And later in Ephesians 5:8-13, it says: For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness, and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them... But everything exposed by the light becomes visible-- and everything that is illuminated becomes a light." Wowweee, I am so blown away this morning!

And one last song I wanted to share called, "A Fragrant Offering", by Rita Springer
(Listen here)

I bring to you a fragrant offering
I pour out my love and I wash your feet
I offer up to you oh Lord this brokenness
What you can see in me shall be my confidence

May it be a pleasing fragrance
That I bring to you oh my Lord
I am so in need of your presence
That I bow before you now
I pour my vial of worship over you (2x)

I bring to you a humble sacrifice
I pour out my heart and I give you my life
I offer up to you oh Lord this costly gift
And with absolute abandon now
My love I confess