My wife, Melissa, can’t pass a perfume counter without trying something new. She would spend an hour at each counter if she could. She wouldn’t just buy a perfume though. She’d buy entire sets that included matching powders, shower gels, lotions, and anything else that was available. A few times, she’s tried on multiple samples in different places on her arms and hands, which made her smell like a flower garden!
Every time I’m with her, she offers me her hand and says “smell this. Do you like it?” If I say “I don’t like it”, “its okay”, or “I like it”, she won’t buy it. If I say “I really like it”, she heads to the register to make her purchase. Melissa wears perfume for me, and she uses it like a tool to ignite my passion. She knows putting on the right fragrance will draw me closer to get a whiff, to steal a kiss, and… You get the picture.
Now look, I know some of you are thinking, you can’t believe Pastor Manuel would write about sexual passion and seduction but trust me, it’s biblical. Take a look at these verses.
“While the king is at his table, My spikenard sends forth its fragrance. A bundle of myrrh is my beloved to me, That lies all night between my breasts. My beloved is to me a cluster of henna blooms In the vineyards of En Gedi.”
Song of Solomon 1:12-14 NKJV
http://bible.com/114/sng.1.12-14.nkjv
In Song of Solomon, the Shulamite woman has a plan to seduce the king, her Beloved. While he’s at dinner, she’s working her plan for a passionate night. She uses three fragrances in her plan. First, there’s spikenard, which is a very expensive perfume. The smell is supposed to draw him in. Second, she references myrrh, which worn in a bundle suspended from a necklace to continually perfume her body. Lastly she mentions henna blooms or camphire (KJV), which is a plant whose clusters are sometimes worn by women to adorn themselves. It also smells sweet and its leaves are used to make dye for polishing nails.
What can we learn from this? We can’t always depend on spontaneous sparks of passion in our marriages. We can’t hold out to special occasions either. Valentine’s Day and wedding anniversaries are nice but not frequent enough to keep our passions burning. We shouldn’t wait for our next getaway or the right weekend either. Any random week day will do. We have to make plans and create passionate moments with our spouses on any given day.