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!

Saints

Well, it seems that another holiday is upon us. For those of you that don't know (or didn't read ma first post), it's All Saints Day! Whoot! In the Catholic Church, the day celebrates those who have died and reached heaven. Tomorrow, All Soul's Day, the celebration and prayers are focused on those who are currently in Purgatory, that in-between place before going to Heaven. I realize that this is quite similar to the Halloween stuff I was talking about yesterday, but going to a Catholic school makes me think about these things even more than I used to.

Since I'm not Roman Catholic, the concept of Purgatory is still a little unfamiliar to me. While I could stumble through Bible passages and try to point to why there is or is not a Purgatory, I feel that I should do more research on my own before I publish my thoughts on the internet (although I'd love to hear thoughts of people who know more about the topic than me!!).

One thing that interests me, however, is the topic of "Saints" and "Sainthood". In the letters of Paul, we see the term "saint" used much differently than churches today use it. Of course, it depends on what version of the Bible you read, but in many versions, Paul uses the term saint to describe a follower of Christ, both living and deceased.

A few examples...

2 Corinthians 1:1 - "Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, To the church of God which is at Corinth with all the saints who are throughout Achaia.."


Ephesians 3:8 - "To me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ..."


Crazy! So while I still have a lot to read concerning these days and what the Bible has to say about them, I think I'll spend this lovely first of November praising God for all of His saints - those followers of the past, present, and future who work to bring God's Kingdom here to Earth.

A picture my roommate Alexandra took of the beautiful Milwaukee sunrise this morning.
Moments like these help remind me how good and beautiful God created this earth to be :)

Happy Halloween?

Happy Halloween everyone! I figure that now is as good of a time as ever to start blogging. I've never done this before, so cut me some slack! I'll try to write about interesting things fairly regularly, but we'll see if it works.


I've been thinking a lot lately about how celebrating Halloween fits in with following Christ. The way college students celebrate it, I don't see any way that the two can coexist. Wearing teeny, expensive costumes and drinking too much alcohol is definitely not the way a follower of Christ should live. What about the actual holiday, though?


After looking it up on Wikipedia, it seems that Halloween does have some roots in Christianity, but they don't seem to be very Biblical. It's traditionally known as "All Hallow's Eve", the eve of All Saints Day. Apparently, "it was traditionally believed that the souls of the departed wandered the earth until All Saints Day, and All Hallow's Eve provided one last chance for the dead to gain vengeance on their enemies before moving onto the next world. To avoid being recognized by a soul, Christians would wear masks and costumes to disguise themselves, following the lighted candles set by others to guide their travel for worship the next day. Today, this practice has been perpetuated through trick-or-treating."

This would scare my soul away for sure!

Honestly, that sounds a lot more like something Plato would have written - souls floating around, looking for the next world. I know that this is definitely way different from the Truths about the afterlife written down in the Bible, which talks about a bodily resurrection and God's new creation. 


As a Christian, it seems like not celebrating Halloween would be a good way to try and live for God in ways separate of this world. That's easy enough for me to say as a college student - it might be a different story when I'm trying to raise kids of my own!


However you decided to spend your time this weekend, I hope you were safe and glorified God through it all :)