If you’ve ever been to a Disney theme park, you may have taken a trip on the “Soarin’ Over California” attraction. It’s an immersive, simulated hang gliding flight over the American West Coast. You feel the wind rush by you, your seats tilt and sway in harmony with the screen in front of you, you smell the oranges as you dip low over an orchard. Since its inception in the mid-2000s, Soarin’ has grown into one of Disney’s most popular attractions.
There’s a story that’s told when the ride was still in development. The creative team was trying to nail down the scent of the ocean for one part of the ride but none of their perfumers could get it right. What did the creative team do? They bought a pair of socks. Then they walked down to the Pacific Ocean and dropped the socks into the water to soak for a few minutes. Then they bagged it up, shipped it to one of the perfumers, and asked them to replicate that smell. They received back a sample (which I assume smelled like cotton and sea salt) that the creative team loved and the rest is history. Why is Soarin’ such a popular ride? It’s well designed, obviously, but it engages almost all the senses. It brings your whole body into the experience.
“My sheep hear My voice,” Jesus said. “Taste and see,” the psalmist tells us. Luke 24 recounts a story with four senses in one passage. Jesus appeared through a closed door. The disciples heard Him speaking. He told them to see His hands and feet. He told them to touch His body, to convince themselves that He was not a ghost. Then He asked for some food, and He tasted the fish. We see God interact with His people in ways that their senses understand.
I once heard someone say that if we were forced to give up one of our five basic senses, most of us would get rid of smell. I don’t know anyone who would want to lose their sight or hearing. I can’t fathom a life without the sensation of touch or the ability to taste food. But losing my olfactory system? It would be inconvenient, perhaps, but not particularly life-altering in the way losing other senses would be. I could still live without making many — or any — alterations to my lifestyle. Don’t get me wrong — humans are incredibly good at smelling. We can detect some substances when the concentration is on the order of a few parts per billion. That’s the equivalent of a drop in an Olympic swimming pool filled with half a million gallons of water. It’s just that smell is one of the senses we tend to disregard. But I would argue that Scripture regards the sense of smell rather highly.
My family and I were at a Bible trivia competition once. My sister’s age bracket was up on the stage when the emcee asked this question: what is the first body part mentioned in the Bible? Everyone else instinctively wrote down, “Rib!” which is what I would have written as well. But my sister scribbles away, turns around her whiteboard, and proudly holds up her answer: “Nostril.” My parents and I were convinced that it was wrong, until the announcer said, “The correct answer is…nostril!” We were flabbergasted. If you’d like to see for yourself, it’s in Genesis 2:7 — God formed the man from the dust and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. And starting there, Scripture forces us to experience the Word of God with our whole body.
But as I researched this idea, I noticed something peculiar. When God communicates with humans, He primarily uses sound or sight. Occasionally He uses taste (He commands Ezekiel and John to eat the scroll). He uses imagery like hard-heartedness to communicate the sense of touch. But the Bible doesn’t really document God using smell to speak to us. You know what it does talk about? It talks about humans using smells to communicate with God. It was the smell of Noah’s sacrifice, not the sight or sound or taste, that moved God to say, “I won’t curse the ground again.” When God wanted to express His displeasure at Israel in Amos, He says that their assemblies have created a stench. God punished Korah and the 250 when they offered incense, but commanded Aaron to burn incense the very next day to stop a plague spreading through the people. God went “out of His way”, so to speak, to make an altar of incense in the tabernacle. He gave specific directions on the dimensions of this altar, of the composition of the incense itself.
Exodus 30:34-38 explains the specifics of the incense: “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Take sweet spices, stacte, and onycha, and galbanum, sweet spices with pure frankincense (of each shall there be an equal part), and make an incense blended as by the perfumer, seasoned with salt, pure and holy. You shall beat some of it very small, and put part of it before the testimony in the tent of meeting where I shall meet with you. It shall be most holy for you. And the incense that you shall make according to its composition, you shall not make for yourselves. It shall be for you holy to the Lord. Whoever makes any like it to use as perfume shall be cut off from his people.’”
I learned two things from this passage. First, the composition of the incense was known to the people. The Law had to be read to the people, so they knew what it was made of. This leads into the second point: the people could never make it as a perfume for themselves. The purpose of the smell was not to elevate an individual, but to honor God.
I love learning these technical details in Scripture. They are fascinating in and of themselves, but that’s not the point. If we leave it here, all I’ve presented is a collection of Scriptural fun facts. Let’s go to Psalm 141:2 — “Let my prayer be counted as incense before you, and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice!” And now we’ve almost come full circle. I asserted previously that the purpose of smell was for us to communicate with God. I think David grasped that here, which is why he compared prayer — one of the most fundamental elements of the Christian life — to incense. It’s not just David; Revelation 5:8 describes the incense in heaven’s golden bowls as the prayers of the saints.
Now we have this connection between incense and prayer. Perhaps we can apply the same lessons we learned about incense to prayer. The first lesson is that the whole congregation needs to know what the ingredients are. The second is that the congregation must be careful not to use it for their own purposes. It’s not for self-aggrandizement. And wouldn’t you know it, we don’t even need a complicated metaphor to explain this! It’s right there in the red letters of Matthew 6.
“‘When you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.”
Jesus gives us a perfect list of ingredients and He gives us a warning up front: don’t use this to improve your personal standing in the community. This is something sacred between you and the Father. Not that prayer should only happen behind closed doors; there are many stories in Scripture where God moved heaven and earth in answer to a public prayer. But those prayers arose from pure hearts before God, not prideful hearts before man. The next time you inhale something pleasant, like freshly baked bread or a citrus grove, exhale a prayer. He loves smelling beautiful things as well.