How Good Do You Smell?

This month LZ7 were in Loreto girls’ school in Altrincham. I had such an awesome time and I met so many beautiful girls inside and out. We have also never met a whole school go mad every lesson no matter what the year group. It’s like no-one cared what the others thought – they were just up for a party, mosh moment, or a screaming laugh.

On Tuesday night I was watching ‘Katie’ which is Miss Price’s new reality TV show, but as I was flicking through the channels during the ads there was another program called ‘Katie and her beautiful friends’. Confused I began to watch ‘Katie and her beautiful friends’ and realised this program is almost the complete opposite to the other I was watching. Throughout the hour I flicked from one to the other, I watched a girl who is very beautiful and spends her time and money ‘refining’ her looks but at times still gets insecure and down about the way she looks, then I watched a beautiful girl who was attacked three years ago and had acid thrown in her face. This Katie has been through so much surgery and burns treatment and is now facially disfigured. To the critical eye she has lost her beauty but the reality is I was completely blown away by her character and her passion to encourage others, giving people the confidence they deserve and the ability to love themselves the way they are.

Katie Price has a very glamorous lifestyle and has fun, she lives her life in her way and that’s cool but the other Katie just lives on another level of beauty that the eye cannot see. She isn’t bitter about the stuff that has happened to her, she doesn’t slag off the haters, she just states the effect their words can have, but moves on knowing the truth for herself.

The thing I came away with from that hour was a better understanding of why I don’t think God cares about what we look like... he loves everything about us including our looks but he never thinks we are anything but good looking – end of story. We make up the rest ourselves, which he wants to help us through and he can if we are willing.

What he does care about is our fragrance, what we leave behind us when we finish a conversation, a day at work or school, dealing with a confrontation, criticism, a fight or an argument. Do people screw their faces or smile wanting more of your fragrance?

So how do you smell good... well, if you don’t put your deodorant or perfume on in the morning how can you expect to smell good? If you want to ooze love, compassion, encouragement, kindness beyond the normal smile you have to make a choice. For example ‘today I’m going to... make it my mission to love the people that are hard to love... encourage at least 10 people... apologise for my bad behaviour or nasty comments from yesterday.’

If a facially disfigured young lady can do it... we can do it.

I believe God asks us to spend time on stuff that is gonna last forever. Our looks are not gonna last forever, but confidence can, love can, encouragement can, kind words, extreme good deeds will. You never hear in the Bible about Jesus worrying about the way he or anyone else looked but he spent his time healing people, loving the unloved, forgiving the unforgivable, touching the untouched (people with leprosy) doing stuff that selfish society don’t spend time doing. He left an awesome beautiful fragrance behind that people wanted to hang around all the time.

We don’t need to smell good on our own. We can ask God to help us to be like him – why not make this your prayer every day this month and see the effects on the people around you?

‘God I want today to be yours, give me words that are kind and an attitude that is positive. Help me to encourage people and love others, even those who don’t show me love. Help me to be more like Jesus.’