Day 11: October 26, 2024
What do you think about salt? I like salty food, as long as it's not too salty. Salt really brings out the flavor in many foods, but I don't eat it on its own. Yuk!
Did you know that historically, salt has been a very precious commodity. It’s not just because it makes food taste better. In the ancient world, salt was an essential as a preservative. Without a source of refrigeration, salt was the means of keeping meat from decaying. The ancients rubbed down meat and fish to preserve it for regular use. Salt was so important in the ancient world that wars were fought over it, and entire economies were based on it. In short, salt could literally make the difference between life and death in a time when fresh food was unavailable.
Jesus used salt as a word picture. Matthew 5:13 records Jesus telling his followers, “You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.”
What is saltless salt good for? Nothing
But what is salty salt good for? Improving flavor and preserving from decay.
What’s my point. Well, if you are like me, you are deeply saddened by the misery and moral decay of the culture that we are temporarily living in. Is there any hope? Is there any way to make things better? I say yes, salt. We need more salt in the world, that is we need more of those that Jesus calls “you” in Matthew 5:13. This “you” is you if you are a true follower of Jesus like me. The problem with us being salt, as Jesus says, is that we can lose our saltiness and be good for nothing in making this world better.
Personally, I don’t hold the world fully to blame for being so increasingly tasteless and corrupt, it is the way of the vicious and deceptive master they were born under. Is each individual responsible for their sin? Of course! But that doesn’t mean that they have the ability to resist the ways of the world nor it’s master. They don’t.
But then Jesus came and provided the way for people to be born again under the rule of a loving master. Now those who live under this loving master, do you have the power to resist the world and its master and they are the salt of the earth. As I see it, the world should be getting better not worse. It sure looks like it is getting worse. There must be something wrong with the salt. We are the ones that God has here to give good flavor to and preserve the world from decay and it is not happening as it should be. Why? I think it is because we look and often act just like the people of the world, that is we have lost our saltiness.
How do we be salty salt, making this world purer? I really don’t think that God want us to be in their faces… salt in the face hurts. No, salt is effective when it is in direct contact with the meat. I think God wants us to be in and around them living out our new natures of love, hope, peace, kindness, goodness and… well, you get the idea.
What do you say? Are you up for it? Let’s live for our master and ask him to make us be salt that is salty through the power of the Holy Spirit so that we can make this world a better, tastier and healthier place.