Morning By Morning #122

His cheeks are as a bed of spices, as sweet flowers.

Song of Songs 5:13 KJV

From the pen of Charles Spurgeon:

Yes, the month of flowers is here! March winds and April showers have done their work, and the earth is now arrayed with beauty. Come, my soul, don your festive clothes and go forth to gather garlands of heavenly thoughts.

Believer, you know where to go, for the “bed of spices” is well known to you and you have often smelled the perfume of “sweet flowers.” So you will go at once to your beloved and find nothing but loveliness and pure joy in Him. Those kind cheeks, once so rudely beaten, often wet with tears of sympathy, then defiled and spat upon, is the face that still smiles with mercy as a fragrant perfume to your heart.

O Lord Jesus, You did not hide Your face from shame and spitting, so I will find my dearest delight in praising You. Your cheeks, furrowed by the plow of grief and crimson from red lines of blood flowing from your thorn-crowned temples, display marks of love beyond all bounds, which thrills my soul far more than precious perfume.

If I could not see Jesus’ entire face, it would be enough to see His cheeks, for the least glimpse of Him is amazingly refreshing to my spirit and yields abundant joys. In Him I do not find simply one fragrance, but “a bed of spices.” I find not one flower, but all kinds of “sweet flowers.” He is my rose, my lily, my violet, and my “cluster of henna blossoms” (Song 1:14). Because I have Him, I have May year round. My soul goes out each day to bathe its happy face in the morning dew of His grace and to find comfort in the singing of the birds of His promises.

Precious Lord Jesus, allow me to truly know the blessedness that dwells in abiding, unbroken fellowship with You. I am a poor and worthless soul, whose cheek You have humbled Yourself to kiss! O Lord, may I kiss You in return with the kisses of my lips.

From the pen of Jim Reimann:

Jesus is a precious flower. But for His godly fragrance to fill the earth, He had to be crushed, just as flowers are crushed to make perfume. And we should never forget “He was crushed for our iniquities” (Isa. 53:5).

Shortly before that crushing took place, however, we see this story:

“While he was in Bethany…a woman came with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head” (Mark 14:3). Notice how even the jar itself had to be broken before the perfume could be poured out. And it was not until the jar was broken that “the house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume” (John 12:3).

A pleasing fragrance is obviously important to God, for His Word mentions seventy-eight times that an offering made to the Lord in the proper way is “an aroma pleasing” (Lev. 1:9) to Him. But the proper way of making the offering came with the idea of sacrifice on the part of the one making the offering. With that in mind, may we sacrificially offer ourselves to the Lord.

Dear Jesus, may my life be crushed, broken, and poured out according to Your will. And may my daily walk be a “pleasing aroma” (Gen. 8:21) to You.