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“Rosie loved spending time in the barn with the horses. Once she had overheard someone at the fair complaining about the smell of the horse barn. She couldn’t understand what they were talking about. She loved everything about her grandmother’s barn: the worn and faded white boards, the smell of the leather and grain in the tack room and the hay stacked in the hayloft, but most of all, the smell of the horses themselves.”
 Those words that I wrote in my book, Sonrise Stable, echo my sentiments about horse-related odors. Now, if you haven’t cleaned your barn all winter, that’s a different story, but in general the fragrance related to horses is a pleasant one for me. Others find the same odors unpleasant and try to avoid them.
The bible describes something very similar in 2 Corinthians 2:14-16.
Now thanks be to God who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and through us diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place.
For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. To the one we are the aroma of death leading to death, and to the other the aroma of life leading to life.
It’s not talking about horses obviously, rather it describes us as being the fragrance of Christ. Are you being a “fragrant” Christian? Do those around you pick up the scent of Christ from you? I have a friend who is allergic to horses and can tell immediately when anyone has been around them. Just the same, people should not be around us very long without being able to tell that we have been around Christ.
Just as some people can’t wait to get out of the horse barn, there are people who can’t stand the fragrance of Christ. The Scripture says that we are the aroma of death to them. They are reminded of their sinfulness, that they are “dead” in their sins. I hope that that aroma eventually becomes a pleasant one to them and leads them from death to life.
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