"Salt is good; but if the salt has lost its flavor, how shall it be seasoned? It is neither fit for the land nor for the dunghill, but men throw it out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear!" Luke 14:34-35
I feel that because I have heard the salt metaphor thrown around in church for so long I have started to forget the message.
Jesus says this after talking about what it takes in order to follow him. We need to be prepared to give our whole lives over for him. And that's where the idea of this odd kind of salt comes in. I don't think I've ever heard of salt losing its saltiness, but if it loses it, it has absolutely no purpose. It's not a pretty stone to look at, especially in the way we have it granulated these days. It's just there.
Jesus, then, is calling us to remember our calling in life. We have to remember what our purpose is, which is to serve. We need to build communities for God. We have to spread the Gospel, the love. However, that means that we have to be ready to take on the mission. We can't let anything drag us one way or another. I find that we are filled with fear so many times that we start to make up excuses for not going forward with our calling in life. We start to fear the lack of money in order to join a ministry. We fear the loss of friends after devoting our lives to God. We fear losing all of our material possessions after following God. But that's where we can become this saltless salt.
If we are truly the body of Christ, we need to be the strong bones, the pliable skin, the healthy organs, the plentiful tissue. We can't be just half of that, for if we do that, we instead become something more like an abnormal growth, a tumor, or even a cancer to the body. Instead, we have to look around us and figure out how to build up our community and how to bring others to Jesus. It's one thing to know every word in the bible, but it's a completely different thing to put it all into practice.
In order for us to live as good salt and as good servants, we need to be preparing ourselves constantly. It's not just about saying that we accept Jesus as our savior, nor is it only about having a degree in theological studies; it's about living our faith. When we live our faith, everything we do will become a lesson for those around us to learn, and a lesson for us to grow from. We have the example, Jesus. Now is the time for us to follow his lead.
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