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When the Aroma of Eid Meets the Aroma of Christ
- M. L. Rogers
- 9 hours ago
- 3 min read
“I can smell the curry on you guys,” a fellow concert-goer said as my son and I stood in line.
Earlier that evening, we had removed our shoes and stepped into our friends’ home. The scent of South Asian spices hit our senses like a tsunami. We received a diplomat’s welcome into their humble living room, where seats lined the walls for the many guests who would soon enjoy the Eid meal. Eid al-Fitr—the Muslim holiday that marks the end of Ramadan—often finds us in settings like this.
Our gracious Rohingya hosts ushered my son and me to a table filled with the finest South Asian cuisine. We hadn’t expected to eat. Because of a previous engagement that evening, we had come early simply to offer greetings to these dear friends. But these kind Muslim refugees would have it no other way—we would eat an early dinner.
In hindsight, I should have expected it. In the last three years since their arrival in our area, there has hardly been a time when they haven’t fed us when we’ve visited—even when we’ve shown up unannounced. Their hospitality is as spontaneous as it is generous.
Later that same night, we stood in line for a Christian concert. It felt like a world away from the house we had just left. Just an hour earlier we had been sitting in a Rohingya home celebrating Eid; now we were surrounded by believers singing about the Christ we long for our friends to know.
And there was no mistaking it—the aroma of home-cooked curry clung to us like a thick London fog. Everyone around us caught the fragrance.
As we carried the scent of our friends’ home at Eid, our prayer has been that we would carry something even more lasting—the “aroma of Christ” (2 Cor. 2:15)—among these Muslim refugees. As we enter their homes again and again, we pray they would not only hear the gospel but also experience it. We pray that the love of Christ displayed in our lives would wash over them like a tidal wave and settle on their households like a warm blanket.
But what does it mean to be the “aroma of Christ”?
In Genesis 8, after the waters of the Great Flood recede, Noah builds an altar and offers some of every clean animal as a burnt offering to the LORD. In verse 21 we read that the LORD smelled the “pleasing aroma” of the sacrifice. The Hebrew word for “aroma” appears many times throughout the Old Testament—ten times in the book of Leviticus alone—and often refers to the pleasing aroma of a sacrifice.
Under the Old Covenant, the sacrificial system allowed people to receive atonement (a covering) for their sins. These sacrifices, however, were always temporary solutions to the deeper problem of sin. It was not until Jesus came as the perfect sacrifice for our sins “once for all” (Heb. 7:27) and established a better covenant (Hebrews 8) that people could know their sins were fully and forever paid for.
To be the “aroma of Christ,” then, points to His sacrificial death on the cross. This is what we long for our Muslim friends to experience—that their sins can be forgiven and that they can receive new life in Christ because Jesus laid down His life as the final sacrifice for us.
For the past three years we have had many opportunities to share the gospel with our Muslim refugee friends. Just as we left their home recently carrying the aroma of Eid, I pray they have also sensed the “aroma of Christ” in our lives.
Please join us in praying for them. May they be among those who are “being saved” as they encounter the One who gave himself for them (2 Cor. 2:15).
