Salt

Hello everyone! Now that I'm back to school, I'm going to try and start blogging again consistently. Try is the keyword there, but if I did it before break, I can do it now, right?! Right.

School is so great this semester so far! Me encantan todos mis profesores y mis clases. I'm excited to start tutoring twice a week at Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School, and I'm really starting to solidify friendships with some wonderful people! It feels great to be back and doing work again :)

All throughout break, for some reason I was thinking a lot about the part in Matthew that talks about how we are the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Specifically I was thinking about the first part: "You are the salt of the earth. But if salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled by men." - Matthew 5:13. This verse has honestly always been a little confusing to me, but I've never really dived into it because everyone else seemed to get it. But seriously, salt of the earth? When I think of salt, I think of french fries, not a metaphor for how to live. I realized, though, that this is definitely an instance where the original context of the verse is very important. In this case, that means the purpose of salt in Biblical times.

First of all, I think it's important to realize how immensely important salt was in Biblical times. Not only was it a seasoning (our primary use today), but it was the main preservative (the only way to keep food longer than a few days without going bad), a disinfectant, a component of ceremonial offerings, and a unit of exchange. Salt was vital to everyday life and culture in the ancient world, so this was a metaphor everyone would have understood and learned from. So, by examining the main roles that salt played in the time of Jesus, we are able to better understand how we can truly be the 'salt of the earth'.

1) Seasoning. This is the main thing I think of when salt is mentioned today. I think of it as something extra, unnecessary, and unhealthy. When we think about WHY we use salt in our food though, the answer is simple: to enhance flavors. We use salt to bring out great flavors in our food, to make it rich and succulent. As Christians, we should be enhancers. We should take the good things that are already present in the world, the good things about people and help enhance them, encouraging them to become even better and truly glorifying.

2) Preservative. This one also isn't too hard to wrap our minds around. Salt was used to keep food, life-sustaining substance, from going bad. As Christians, we should be preservers. We should be working to preserve and sustain the beauty in the world, and of course working to create more of it.

3) Finally, disinfectant. Salt was used to kill germs and keep bacteria and harmful things from spreading and killing good cells. As Christians we're NOT supposed to be killers though! We're supposed to be revealers - salting wounds and shedding light on evil to stop it in its tracks and keep it from spreading.

It's so important that we put verses like these (really the whole Bible) in the context it was written, always keeping in mind that although the Bible was written for us, it wasn't written to us.

Let us go and be the salt of the world - enhancing, preserving, and revealing. Amen!