I smell like Jesus

Yesterday my Sunday school class decided to spend our time together praying for each other rather than doing the typical lesson/discussion. Every week we take prayer requests at the end and throw up a short general prayer, but most of us have been going through unusually hard times lately, so it seemed like it was time to do some more serious praying.

So we went around the room, family by family, sharing our concerns. After one family shared, a few people would gather around them to pray. It was a strangely wonderful blessing to hear others' prayer concerns and to share their burdens if only for a few minutes. One of the class members brought anointing oil with him and offered to anoint each person as we prayed for them. Now, my knee-jerk reaction to being anointed with oil is pretty negative; during high school, when I was going through multiple surgeries on my ankle and not healing, several well-meaning folks anointed me with oil at different times, hoping that God would perform a miracle and I would be totally healed before their eyes. Needless to say, that didn't happen, and I couldn't help but feeling like I had disappointed their expectations or hurt their faith by not getting healed. So when Shawn offered to anoint us, I just sort of complied. And, as I expected, nothing "happened."

But as I left church that afternoon, I kept getting a whiff a frankincense every now and then (it took me a few times to remember that the smell was coming from my forehead). A few times that afternoon Matt jokingly told me "You smell like Jesus!" And it made me realize that the oil represented God's presence with me. Which was really comforting.