Why My Dachshund Wore Cologne

A while back I told you about my beagle, Bailey.  Now I need to tell you about my dachshund, Buddy.  (Don't worry I only have two dogs, not many more stories are coming). My wife and daughter took the dogs on a walk along the path near the retention pond by Airline.  Buddy got off the leash for a bit and after he got close to them again they smelled a strange odor.  Judith thought it must be the hogs in the barn near them, then as they got further from there, they realized it was Buddy.  He had apparently found something really stinky, like hogs, in his freedom from the leash.

I wonder now if he found some hog manure.  For all of you who did not grow up on a farm like me, if you ever are around hogs, you realize they have a very unique and long lasting odor to what they leave behind.  I raised hogs for a while.  Once, after cleaning a pen and repeatedly washing my hands to get rid of the smell, I tried washing my hands in Listerine.  That did not work either.

After several baths, Buddy still smelled like a little pig.  Did I say he is part long haired dachshund?  It was my turn to give him a bath with another form of soap.  It helped but he still smelled like something Jimmy Dean would raise.  So I tried a spray or two of some old cologne I had.  It helped some.  He went from smelling bad to just smelling strange.  Fortunately, for us and Buddy, even the worst smells fade with time.  He smells like a dachshund today.

As I was giving Buddy another futile bath, a thought came to me.  Sometimes we treat our sin like a really bad odor.  When we have really messed up so that life is unpleasant, we can try to wash and wash ourselves and do whatever we can think of to undo what we have done.  And if it is still unpleasant we put on some thing to make things "smell" different.  We often believe it will just get better in time like a bad odor.  But there is a difference between stink and sin.  Stink will go away eventually. Sin, unless God does something with it, stays.  That is why we so desperately need to get grace - to understand how and why God forgives us and cleanses us and changes us.  We work on that more this Sunday as we journey through the truth of Galatians.

For they journey...