Is there any better fragrance than the smell of freshly baked bread?  [Ok, maybe I’ll give you the smell of bacon frying, but stick with me here.]  It is both soothing and inviting.  It can make your mouth start to water, and maybe make your stomach start to growl a bit.  It can bring back memories of long ago.  It can remind us of Jesus, who is the “Bread of Life” – John 6:35;48.  Isn’t this wonderful?

And yet, you have probably noticed that once you detect the smell of freshly baked bread, it isn’t very long before you can’t smell it anymore.  Isn’t that strange?  A smell that excited such wonderful feelings just goes away.  And it’s not because the source of the fragrance has been removed.  The bread’s still there – you just can’t smell it anymore.  Is this a malfunction of your sense of smell?  Does this mean you’ve been infected with Covid which notoriously inhibits the senses of smell and taste?

Actually, this strange phenomenon is due to something known as “olfactory fatigue” - also known as “nose blindness”.  It is temporary, and perfectly normal.  According to various scientific articles I read, this is the brain’s way of preventing an overload of the nervous system with data that has already been analyzed and determined to be non-threatening, thus freeing it to respond to new incoming data.  [Don’t you love the way science reduces the amazing complexity of the human brain and nervous system down to the level of a highly-functioning, yet soulless computer?]  Thus, the smell of freshly baked bread, or any other wonderful smell you can imagine, quickly, and sadly, seems to disappear from our noses, leaving only the ordinary smells, the usual and customary smells, the normal smells of our normal and ordinary lives.

Similarly, some people have the ability to tune out sounds and noise that seem to others to be terribly distracting.  Years ago, I was visiting in the home of some friends, and I couldn’t help but notice the nearly never-ending sound of vehicular traffic on the Interstate Highway that ran close by their home.  When I asked how they could sleep at night with such noise, they said they didn’t even notice it anymore.  The constant whine of traffic had become natural to them, a part of the normal background noise in their home.  How strange, I thought.  I concluded that there was no way that I could ever get to a point where such a constant and loud noise could simply be ignored.  Yet, before the evening was over, it occurred to me that I was no longer being distracted by the sound of high-speed traffic.  The noise from the Interstate had, somehow, blended into the background and was no longer something to which I paid any attention.

If our noses can reach a point where they don’t smell something, and our ears can reach a point where they don’t hear something, I wonder if our eyes can reach a point where they don’t see something?  It took only a second for me to realize, based on my own experience, that this is of course true.  In the days following Hurricane Ida, the devastation of downed trees and storm debris was everywhere, and it was terrible to see, and it always invoked an expression of shock.  But, as time passed, this began to gradually change.  The shock wore off.  Last Friday, after I mowed my yard, I stood in the driveway and proudly admired how nice and clean everything looked.  It actually took a minute or so of proud gazing before my eyes finally focused on and “saw” the gigantic pile of storm debris - dead tree limbs stacked four or five feet high and covering half of my yard by the street.  How had I missed that?  And then, I “saw” that practically every house on the street had a similar pile of ugly debris.  And then I remembered that this is true throughout my whole huge neighborhood, and throughout our town, and throughout our Parish, and all across South Louisiana, with the exception being that the devastation simply gets worse in so many places.  Even though I was technically “seeing” all of these giant piles of debris, they were, for some reason, not registering in my mind as being particularly unusual.  They had already faded into the background, and were just part of my normal and ordinary life.  They were no longer something to which I paid any attention.  

Here’s some truth, for me and for you - behind each pile of debris lies a story of some kind – perhaps it is a story of gratitude, perhaps it is a story of service, perhaps it is a story of pain and loss, perhaps it is a story of not knowing what to do to start over again.  Each story is, in its own way, life-changing.  And each story is deserving of being seen, and of being heard, and of being honored.

A friend from another state called the other day to check on me, for which I was very grateful.  As we spoke, he asked if things were pretty much back to normal.  I couldn’t answer the question.  “Normal”?  What is “normal” now?  How will we know when “normal” returns?  And how can my life ever really get back to “normal” as long as there are others whose lives are not now, and never again will be “normal”?               

From my place as the pastor of my church, I am in a position to “see” and “hear” things that might otherwise not be noticed by everyone.  So let me tell you that what I see and hear is that my church is full of wonderful people who have not allowed their eyes and their ears to ignore the stories behind the debris.  My church is full of wonderfully generous people.  My church is full of wonderfully serving people. 

And my church is part of a Fellowship of people in other churches in other places who also will not allow their eyes and their ears to ignore the stories behind the debris.  Those people are wonderfully generous and wonderfully serving, and they have come to the aid of suffering people in our State in amazing ways.  I am so grateful that our church is a part of this Fellowship.

No, things are not back to “normal”.  In some ways, I hope things never return to the kind of “normal” in which the pain and suffering of people with whom we share this world somehow blend into the background where it can be ignored.  May The Lord allow us to truly see and to hear the stories behind the debris, and to honor those stories with service in the name of Jesus.    

Ambrose Ramset | Shepherd