Pumpkin Spice
So we have moved into fall. A new season. A new adventure. New opportunities.
I had my first strange discovery of the season today…a thought I have never had before.
Did you know there is no pumpkin in pumpkin spice? Cinnamon, ginger cloves, nutmeg….but no pumpkin.
I feel silly, but there it is.
I feel the world may see Christians the same way. We live in a world that has become so toxic, so joyless.
Are we spicy….but mislabeled?
Are we a covering to make something more palatable?
Are we seasonal? Here for a brief time and destined to move on…replaced by peppermint, and forgotten for another year.
As Christians we live in a tension.
I am called to be a spice….The Bible calls us salt…something that enhances.
I am called to make something more palatable…and preserve it.
And, in my mortality…I am seasonal yet in my salvation I am also unending.
And like pumpkin spice, the flavor of autumn, I too represent a season. That there will be a time in which the old passes away, and the new will come. Perhaps it is fitting that pumpkin spice gives way to the season that brings us Christmas.
But in all of this musing, winding, rambling thought of my mind…I also have to consider the science.
Where does pumpkin spice get its power? Not from its taste, but instead by its smell. We forget that much of what we describe as taste is truly from our nose.
So I look at Galatians 5:1 (ESV)
Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. 2 And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
The word that caught my eyes this time is fragrant. “A sweet or pleasant smell”
2 Corinthians 2:15-17 would take this even further
For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, 16 to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? 17 For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God’s word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ.
Christ was a pleasant offering to the Lord…we are called to be that as well.
How did he do it…sacrificial love.
How do we do it…sacrificial love
We love because he first loved us. – 1 John 4:19 (ESV)
I will tell you that we are to be more than just a seasonal trend. But in these thoughts that I have been wrestling with for the last week or so, I will leave it to you to ask the question: What does this mean to me?
Personally, as I struggle to answer that question I am going to look at 1 Peter 1:13-16
After that I have to go figure out just how many spices are in Allspice…..
With much affection, your ADD driven to the cross pastor,
-Pastor Dan