Stinking to High Heavens

It was the loveliest of Saturday afternoons. I was back porch tap, tap, tapping on my laptop and nearing the end of some very challenging edits on my next manuscript. Meanwhile, my man was getting a good bit of yard work done and my sweet Dixie Belle was having a high old-time wading in the edge of the lake and chasing the occasional squirrel.

Ah, the smell of freshly mown grass…It smells so clean, so fresh, so – sniff, sniff, “What in the world?!” I kid you not, I smelled Dixie coming before I saw her. She’d been wallowing in her favorite scent: Perfume ‘D Dead Animal and she brought her noxious self straight onto my back porch and SHOOK before I could say, “If you come any closer, I’m going to kill you and tell the Good Lord you died!”

Needless to say, I had to stop what I was doing, wipe down my surroundings, toss the cushions in the washer, and give her a sudsy doggy bath—three baths to be accurate, with canine shampoo and the water hose. It was a most sullen affair for the bather and the bathe and it was a while before I could return to my writing.

Dogs love to roll in the perfume of death. None of us can explain it, but we call know they do. What we’re slower to realize is that when we resist God’s will and choose our own—for that’s the rock bottom definition of sin— we choose a similar stench. In Psalms 38.5, the Psalmist spoke of his sins becoming foul and festering. In other words, y’all, he was stinking to the high heavens, and who wants to do that? Not this belle!

The thing about Dixie’s odorous afternoon is that she was still mine while she was rolling in her favorite stench but the resulting smell still broke up our fellowship. Let’s not do something similar with our God. Let’s pursue Him with an undivided, submitted heart. Nothing is this whole wide world is worth sacrificing the joy of His presence.

Hugs, Shellie