Monday, July 7, 2008

in the nose of the beholder

I was intrigued with the smelling habits of Jake, the dog, today.  He belongs to my niece and I took him for a walk.  He seemed endlessly fascinated with almost every tree and mailbox we passed and with sprigs of grass and patches of dirt that seemed totally uninteresting to me.  Of course I've heard about how keen a dog's sense of smell is.  It turns out that dogs have 25 times the number of olfactory sensors that we have.  They can detect odors at concentrations 100 million times lower than us.  They can detect a drop of blood in over a gallon of water.  When a dog is out for a walk, even a bare sidewalk yields a ton of information about the neighbors, their animals and the ice cream cone a child ate last week.  In a sense they "see" the world through their highly sensitive noses.  Sometimes I think we limit the extent of our knowledge to what our limited senses can perceive.  If we, ourselves, can't see, touch, taste, hear or smell something we may question its reality.  Just as dogs show us that there is more than meets the eye to our surroundings, so we might consider that there is more to life and more to spiritual reality than we can pick up naturally.  Truly we need the Holy Spirit to show us more of the "rest of the picture".

 

Ephesians 1:17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, 18 the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power

 

blessings,

Rob Smith

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