The link above is a rather grim story about a woman who drove around for months with a dead body in the passenger seat of her car. It was a homeless friend of hers who had died in the seat and she just put a box of baking soda with her and covered her up with clothes to hide her. She was afraid to tell authorities. The police say she got used to the smell.
Wow, that is rough. And that is quite a smell to get used to. But then I got thinking, I think that is true of a lot of us. There are areas of spiritual death in our lives. Some people live lives of serious spiritual death. Perhaps there is an issue with lying, perhaps with gossip. Maybe you look back and see a line of "enemies" over the years, people whom you have never tried or even desired to find reconcilliation with (it was all their fault anyway.) Perhaps it is sexual sin, an affair, pornography, sex outside of marriage. Perhaps it is financial dishonesty. How about just plain unkind behavior, an unchecked temper, a poor attitude with family and/or friends. Whatever the issue, there are sometimes areas of spiritual death that we allow to sit in our lives. It stinks, but you know, you get used to it.
We need to not allow ourselves to grow accustomed to spiritual death. God reminds us in the Bible that we are to leave spiritual death behind and pass into life. Too often we are too afraid of what people will say or think if we admit there is a dead body in our spiritual lives. We've driven around with it for so long, what will people say when I finally admit to it? Well, we need to realize that most of us have, at one time or another, tried to cover up and mask the smell of spiritual death in our lives. We need to come clean. The drive will be so much better when we allow God to truly set us free from the death that we carry around in us.
I constantly see people who have gotten used to quite a lot of "spiritual smell" and it should remind me to look inward and see what needs to be cleaned in me.
