Hey Inspired Woman...

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At home pampering... take a moment for you

rosemary

lemon

This is something you can enjoy at home!  Place water in a pot and heat to a boil.  Add a small bunch of rosemary and slices of lemon.  Shut off the heat after it all gently boils.  Make sure your face is clean of all makeup, etc. Place your face near the steam rising from the pot.  Put a towel over your head to keep the aromatic vapors around the face. Enjoy the steam and the fragrance for five minutes.

To finish, rinse off your face and apply a cotton ball of toner and moisturizer as usual.  Makeup will glide onto the skin like silk and the pores will appear lighter and clean.

The Fragrance Of Life

This special page comes from the heart of a dear friend, Donna Allwine.  She is a minister of the Gospel,a professor at Wesleyan University and a former spa owner.  Her life has been an inspiration to mine & I know you will be refreshed, inside and out, by her beautiful gift!

Donna Allwine

He makes me lie down in green pastures.

Psalms 23

Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates.

Prov 31:31

I love the smell of the earth after it rains.  Somehow everything seems alive and fresh with promise of new growth and new beginnings.  As I inhale the aroma of the pristine, clean air, I am infused with pleasure.  I am thankful to God for life.  The Lord has given me another day to view the raindrops still glistening on the roses on my back deck.  (Of course, I am observing these roses from a standing position, because the rainfall has also drenched the cushions on my patio furniture.  Experience has taught me that sitting on a chair after the rain has soaked my deck cushions leaves raindrops glistening on my seated side as well as the roses!)  I lean over to smell the roses and partake of the scent.  The day has begun and is full of THE FRAGRANCE OF LIFE.

Fragrance is one of the pleasures that causes me to worship the Lord.  God also enjoys fragrance and receives my worship and responds to my worship.  In the Bible, there is a story of God enjoying fragrance.  We find it in Genesis.  God had commanded Noah to build an ark because he was planning to destroy the world, but would save mankind and the air-breathing birds and animals in a large ship.  Noah built the ark and he, his family and the animals took shelter from God’s destruction of the earth for the forty days and forty nights of rain, and the almost nine months during which time the water abated from the face of the earth after the flood.  When it was finally time to exit the ark, the first thing Noah did was worship the Lord with a sweet-smelling sacrifice.

Genesis 8:20-22 tells us:  “Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it.  The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said, ‘Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood.  And never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done.  As long as the earth endures, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night will never cease.’”

In this section of scripture, we find Noah exiting the ark after the earth has been flooded, endured 40 days and 40 nights of rain, and the waters have been abated to reveal a new earth and the preservation of only Noah, his family and the animals in the ark.  Everything else has been destroyed.  The first thing Noah does is build an altar to worship God.  With good reason—God has spared his life and that of his family.  God has a plan to continue with mankind.  In His judgment, He has displayed mercy and Noah was fortunate enough to have found favor in God’s eyes and to be the recipient of that mercy.  Noah was thankful and his first thought was to honor and rededicate himself to the Lord.  God was worthy of worship and Noah worshipped him by building an altar and offering a burnt offering on it.  The offering that Noah provided was a burnt offering.  Since it was completely burnt, it represented a total exaltation of the Lord and a total dedication of the offerer to God.  These were Noah’s expressions of faith and love for the Lord.

Since worship is a very personal matter, it is to God as the “LORD” that Noah brought his sacrifice.  In the Hebrew the word LORD—Yahweh is the personal and covenant name of God, emphasizing his role as Israel’s redeemer and covenant Lord versus God (Elohim) which is a general term.  Noah sacrificed because the Lord is worthy of worship.

The Lord received Noah’s worship.  “The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma.”  Fragrances are certainly subject to personal preferences.  Some of us like flowers or fruits, while others may prefer greens, citrus, or spices.  There are examples in the Bible where God sometimes was pleased with offerings and others where He was less pleased.  For example, with Cain and Abel, God accepted Abel’s offering, but not Cain’s and that rejection lead to the murder of one brother by another.  In this case, God received Noah’s worship.  Smelling the sweet savor is a way of saying that God accepted the offerings and was pleased with them.  Not only did God accept Noah’s worship and take pleasure in it, but he also responded to Noah’s worship with a promise.  The Lord promised never to destroy all living creatures as He had done.

The Lord did this not because of the character of man whom He had declared to have evil inclinations in his heart from childhood, but because of His character as the God of justice and mercy.  God not only responded to Noah’s worship, He rewarded Noah’s worship with a new and greater revelation of His character.

In the same way, we may worship God because He is worthy of worship.  He is faithful to receive our worship and respond to our worship—even reward our worship.  Our revelational Lord interacts and fellowships with us through our worship.  He reveals Himself to us each day as we live and breathe and inhale of THE FRAGRANCE OF LIFE.

EAU DE COUNSEL

Proverbs 27:9  “Perfume and incense bring joy to the heart, and the pleasantness of one’s friend springs from his earnest counsel.”

Cathy Guisewife is the creator of the very popular syndicated cartoon strip “Cathy.”   In the comic strip, Cathy routinely has encounters with her mother, who is always full of advice for her unmarried, career-oriented daughter.  In real life, Cathy’s mother has been known to offer her advice from time to time.

Guisewife once said, “I believe very strongly in visualizing goals way beyond what seems humanly possible.  I got this from my parents.  When my mother first suggested I submit some scribbles to a syndicate, I told her I knew nothing about comic strips.  Mom said, “So what?  You’ll learn.”  When I pointed out that I didn’t know how to draw, she said, “So what?  You’ll learn.”  All parents believe their children can do the impossible.  They thought it the minute we were born, and no matter how hard we’ve tried to prove them wrong, they all think it about us now.  And the really annoying thing is, they’re probably right.

When we face challenges that lie just beyond our ability, we enter into the realm of faith and hope.  It is as we face new frontiers in our lives that we truly encounter what our Creator has endowed us to do.  Don’t be afraid to desire to accomplish more in life.

We have just recently celebrated Mother’s Day.  Who doesn’t remember the wonderful advice given to us by our moms?  My mother’s classic saying was to make sure I took a jacket on crisp spring or fall days to make sure I kept warm in the “tricky weather.”  One of the ways we honor our mothers is by giving them a gift—perhaps flowers, candy, taking them out for a meal—or a gift of fragrance. One year I remember I was given a wonderful bottle of fragrance which had been engraved with my name and a message to me,  “Donna, My Delight.”  That was a wonderful gift.  I loved the giver, appreciated the thoughtfulness and the gift truly brought joy to my heart.

In the same way that perfume gratifies the senses, friendly suggestions are as pleasant as perfume.  Have you ever thought of advice or counsel as pleasant and delightful as perfume?  I never have.  If you are as independent as I am, unsolicited advice is as unwelcome as ants at a picnic—they show up, uninvited, and are a complete nuisance.  But this proverb talks about counsel being a good thing.  Indeed it indicates counsel and advice are pleasant like perfume.  Not only is it good to give counsel, it’s also good to receive counsel.  Proverbs 27:9 parallels other proverbs that encourage the wise to both give and accept counsel.

Proverbs 15:23 says, “A man finds joy in giving an apt reply—and how good is a timely word.”  Proverbs 25:11 says, “A word aptly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver.  These are the fruit of wisdom.

The secular meaning of Proverbs 27:9 is that the advice of one friend to another is compared to the sweet fragrance of perfume.  Counsel in the Hebrew is advice, counsel or a plan conceived in the mind of an individual or a group that is to be actively carried out.  Advice can come in the form of political consultation or military strategy.  Good counsel is communicated by those who possess wisdom.  Wisdom herself warns against rejecting good advice.  Plans may have evil intentions or good ones and should be discerned!  Isaiah uses this word (etsah) in connection with human history, in which God implements his plan and purposes for mankind within the cycle of judgment and restoration.  Therefore, in this case, etsah does not refer directly to advice, but to God’s providence in maintaining the affairs of mankind.

The friend addresses a range of intimacy of close friendship to the casual awareness of shared humanity in three basic categories:

1)A friend—inner circle of close companions

2)Neighbor—someone who lives in close proximity or who crosses one’s path

3)Someone with whom no intimacy is intended but who is in the community fellowship of people.

Advice is a good thing—even if it comes from your mother.  What is the best advice?  The counsel found from the Lord in His Word.  One of Jesus’ names is Wonderful Counsel.  Enjoy a little Eau De Counsel from Him.

This is an American version of the original Eau De Cologne, introduced in this country in 1808.

Ingredients:

2 cups distilled water

¼ cup vodka

6 drops essential oil of lavender

2 drops essential oil of clove bud

8 drops essential oil of bergamot

Instructions:

1.Pour the water and vodka into a sterilized glass container.

2.Add the lavender, clove bud, and bergamot oils, stirring well.

inSPArations