Girls want to smell like fruits and vegetables

I had this thought while I was in the shower. I'm married and my wife has no less than 8 different "flavors" of body washes, soaps, body lotions and fragrances. Ok, yeah, I like using the lotions for my soft hands and feet (a man should never skimp on the foot love!)

These fragrances are based on fruit and vegetable scents, which is nice, but isn't that kind of weird? We people want to smell like black raspberry, country apple, apple-vanilla, lemon-verbena (what's a verbena?), cucumber-melon, coconut-lime, sage, cotton, juniper, mango, plumeria, rice-flower, tea-ginger (these are just a few of the flavors available!)

So I started thinking...why? I guess it's the kid in me, but I think why do we want to put something on our body (lotion, soap, perfume, etc.) to make us smell better? And the answer hit me right in the face with my armpit...we stink. Humans just smell bad. So I can't help thinking, is this a product of the fall? Before Adam and Eve lunched on the fruit tree (I guess we can't stay away from fruit, see above list) did they stink? Did Adam suffer from B.O.? Did Eve have feminine odor? Did they fart, did they sweat, did they have bad breath?

I'd like to think no, I'd like to think that their breath smelled like citrus, their bodies smelled like cucumber-melon or plumeria, and their personal areas smelled like a spring morning. But it all changed when sin entered the picture, and now a consequence of our sin is that we will sweat and stink and forever battle to cover that up.

Maybe every day we put on perfume, every day we wash with lemon-verbena soap and brush with cinnamon toothpaste we're searching for a sort-of physical forgiveness. We're looking to redeem our body odor with something better, something sweeter, something more perfect than us. All the while it's just an outward expression of the cry of our soul. On a physical level every day we wash with soap but on a spiritual level there is a soap to wash our soul.

That soap is in the form not of fruit juice or crushed herb, but in the form of blood. Our dirty, putrid, black souls are washed white by way of red. When we wash our souls in red, we no longer have to search for something more perfect to make us acceptable. We've already found it and in finding it our souls become sweet smelling eternally.

Because of Christ, we give off a sweet scent rising to God, which is recognized by those on the way of salvation--an aroma redolent with life.
2 Corinthians 2:15 (The Message)