A few days ago, I bought an Easter lily and brought it home to Jan. She put it on a table in our living room next to my writing chair. I am looking over at the lily as I write these words. Each morning for the last week, when I walk into the dark living room before I turn on the light, I catch the fragrance of the lily. Its sweet fragrance is a reminder of the special meaning of this day.

Some of you will go to church today and return home to situations in your family or workplace that have been emitting an unhealthy odor, the smell of a painful and loveless circumstance. Something else is taking place that you need to recognize. This recognition will come when you choose to interpret your situation through the filter of faith, not fear. 

Like our Easter lily, your presence has actually changed the fragrance of your surroundings because you have carried Jesus Christ, the Resurrected One into the stench of human brokenness. He has authority and dominion over everything in this life. His resurrected status has the power to change how you perceive and reinterpret what some have defined as a hopeless situation. 

You have been called to walk in the beautiful fragrance of His victory, not in the stench of defeat that can permeate our human struggles. This realization of Christ’s victory carries a heavenly fragrance that can turn the foulest stench of human failure into the beautiful perfume of redemption.

“But thank God! He has made us his captives and continues to lead us along in Christ’s triumphal procession. Now he uses us to spread the knowledge of Christ everywhere, like a sweet perfume” (II Corinthians 2:14).