Stay salty

Disclaimer:  I don't feel like looking up a bunch of references today, so I'm just doing this off the cuff, as a stream of conscious thought, so to speak.  Welcome to my internal world.  This is my uncurated way of thinking.  Maybe you can take something from it, maybe not.  But I just thought I would share, for whatever it is worth.

Today I have been pondering salt.  A common, every day household item, nothing special, cheap and unspectacular.  Old as time.  And yet.  Such versatility.  Such unique qualities.  So important that it is mentioned multiple times in the Bible as an unqualified virtue.   Here is my list of thoughts so far:

• Salt can lose its saltiness, and nothing can revive it.  This is interesting. Pure salt actually cannot lose saltiness, but that is not available in everyday use.  What we have is salt mixed with contaminants of various types, which modify and mellow and even completely change the flavor of the salt.  If you leave the salt next to something really unsavory, it can contaminate the salt to the point that it is completely unusable and has to be thrown away.  It cannot be revived once it gets to that point.  Salt that has lost its saltiness is no longer any good.  It has lost all its value, and its virtue is destroyed.  We'll come back to that thought.
• Salt can be used as a preservative.  Back in the day, salt was used to preserve meats and vegatables.  The very saltiness dehydrates the food, and prevents mold from growing.
• Bitter yet enhancing.  I personally find salt bitter tasting, and I do not generally like the taste in my food.  And yet, in small amounts, that very same salt can enhance the flavor of certain foods and bring out a taste explosion.  Salt represents so much of life - you take the bitter with the good, and when we mix it up, it can come out full and rich and rewarding.
• Life giving.  We have been indoctrinated with the information that too much salt is bad for us.  We have been told over and over again that it will increase our blood pressure, and most people must reduce salt intake.  (Although not everyone.  I, for one, am told to eat more salt to get my BP up, and I don't like it, so its a hard slog to do it.  Proof that the grass is always and forever greener on the other side of the fence.)  But the reverse is also true.  Every time you go to the ER or have routine blood work, they will monitor your sodium level, and if it is too low, it is a serious problem and they will bump it up.  The body needs salt, and not having enough salt is also bad.  It is getting the balance right that is important.
• Stinging yet Healing.  If you have been to the ocean, and jumped in with a small cut or wound, you know the salt water stings like the dickens on that open wound. On the other hand, if you have ever dealt with an elderly person, you know they tend to get wounds that are hard to heal.  One of the things that you end up doing is using salt water to wash the wound.  Although the salt stings, salt is healing.  It is a natural antiseptic and anti-inflammatory (your great-grandmother knew that, which is why she probably bathed with epsom salts!)  Sometimes you have to go through the pain to get to the healing.
• Melts ice:  If you live in snowy climates, you know that salt melts ice.  When you have cold, icy sidewalks, you throw down salt, and it will melt, because the salt lowers the freezing temperature of water.
• Salt comes in many colors.  In addition to the usual white table salt, there are a variety of different salts out there.  Pink, red, grey, black and blue are the most common, but there are others as well.  Impurities in the contaminants cause the colors, and they can be beautiful to see.  But the salt is still salt, and contains all the same properties as any other salt, no matter the color.  It is still life giving, preserving, healing, and enhancing, and it is still an essential element to life.

So what got me to thinking about all this?  There are so many references to salt in the Bible.  Christians love references and analogies.  I think sometimes it makes us feel good, and we can walk away thinking we have our pat little answers and have had our little lesson for today, and then we don't have to think much more deeply about the actual meaning of the concept, which I suspect was not what God had in mind.  I mean, how often do we really want to dig deep and think about how those references actually apply to our lives today, right now, in this time and place?

God told us to be IN this world, but not OF this world.  We are to live here, to inhabit the world, to take part in the world, to participate fully, just as he did.  So, when he told us to be salt in the world, I take him at his word.  He meant for us to be salt, with all its qualities.  So going through my list, how do we do that?  (I am going to skip the first one and save that for last.)

• Preservative:  We have to preserve the The Way that Jesus taught, to bring his gospel message to the world through the way we live and love and serve others.  We are not meant to be Pharisees, telling others the way to do it, but thinking we are above them.  We are meant to BE the preservative.  To BE the messenger.  To BE the people who do the actual loving and serving and living The Way that Jesus lived.  That is being salt.  Jesus loved radically and recklessly.  He asked his followers to do the same.  He asks that of us as well.  Am I willing?  That is what he has called me to do.
• Bitter yet enhancing:  Life can be bitter, even to the cross.  Bitterness comes to each life, and it is unpleasant to face.  Bitterness is inevitable.  Why me is a human reaction to bad situations, but you don't have to remain stuck there.  God provides exits for every closed door, even to death.  You may not see the exit sign in the moment, but it will eventually light up and if you walk through, something good is waiting there for you.  Salt is bitter, but with the bitterness can come an enhanced flavor or appreciation you would not have otherwise.  I know this from my own personal experience, or I could not say this with the assurance of my faith.  God has walked me through some hard times, and he has had good things waiting on the other side when the time was right.  And I can honestly say that I would not have understood or appreciated some of those good things without having gone through the hard patches.  I have had to be salty for people going through hard times, and because I have been there, I can be salty with love and empathy.  It makes all the difference and allows me to help in a way I couldn't if I hadn't been through those hard times.
• Life giving: I suppose I have given life to two people, my son and my daughter.  I have been pretty salty with them at times, in my effort to bring them up and help them be the best they can be.  (They turned out really well in spite of me, I'm glad to say.). But I hope that in addition, I have also given Christian life and hope to others.  That is truly the salt of life, sharing seasoning of knowledge and information with someone so you can walk togther in faith.  Life is hard, and best done with others in community.  I hope that I have always provided a full shaker of salt when needed, and I have counted on others to refill my shaker more times than I can remember.  Together we have fully seasoned each other's lives with love and faith and community.  Its that balance of pinging off of each other that is so valuable.  You have to have community that you can trust to be honestly salty with you in order to grow in faith.
• Stinging yet healing:  There are times that salt stings.  When a fellow Christian has to have a hard conversation, it can sting.  When you disagree fundamentally with someone, especially about an issue that goes to the core of your deeply held theological beliefs, it hurts.  Sometimes, the wounds are so deep they cannot be healed, and you amputate them.  But often, with time and continued conversation, you are able to heal and move forward.  Salt can sting, but salt, gently applied, can also heal.  Sometimes you need to fully clean the wound in order to clear away what is bad, in order to get to get at the remaining good.  From there, you can start fresh.  We shy away from the hard conversations, especially in these deeply divided times.  It is scary to talk to people today.  Relationships have permanently ended and families have torn apart over differences that would have been unthinkable a few years ago.  But there is always a hope that somehow we can have honest conversations that will sting at first, but ultimately heal the divisions between us.  Because it is impossible to believe that the divisions are as deep and the chasm as uncrossable as it seems.  Somehow we have to find the way to be the salt of the world and get past the sting to the healing.
• Melts ice:  There are a lot of icy hearts around these days.  Maybe people need some salt to lower the freezing temperature and melt some of that ice, get people talking again.  I don't know.  Freezing each other out hasn't worked too well.  Division and hatred has never really been a recipe for success.  Maybe we need to try some salt.
• Colors:  Which leads me to the many colors.  Salt commonly comes in white, but it comes in all kinds of colors.  They are all beautiful.  Pink Himalayan salt is often made into lamps or small knick knacks, and they are lovely.  Even more beautiful are blue salt objects.  The impurities in the salt are what bring forth the gorgeous colors, and there is a lesson there for us.  It is the very diversity in the salt that makes it interesting and unique and beautiful, but underneath, salt is still salt.  It has all the same qualities and characteristics, no matter what the color, or where it is from.  Salt is salty, it preseves, and enhances, it stings and heals, it is life giving and seasoning.  Unless...

It loses its saltiness.  When salt loses its saltiness, it is no longer of any value.  To be salt, it must be all those things.  If you take those things away from it, it is no longer salt, and it is no good.  It gets thrown away.  Useless.  Doesn't even melt the ice under our feet.

As a Christian, my value is in my saltiness.  It is in bringing my salt to the world.  It is in standing for what is right, what Jesus taught me, living a life that God ordained for me before I was even born.  Things have not exactly gone to a regular earthly plan - I was born to an unwed teenaged mom at a Salvation Army Hospital, adopted at 16 months, lost a father at age 12, divorced, single mom, moved around a lot, experienced multiple miscarriages, never really had a career, never made much money, always struggled.  My life does not exactly read like a success novel.  But maybe that's the best reason for me to be the salt of the story.  God made me salty, because he knew I needed to be.

But here is what I can do.  Stand for what's right.  Be couragous.  Walk the Jesus Way.  Be a Follower of Jesus and love one another as Christ loved me.  Be God's Salt in the World.