Are You Living the Salt Life?



If you live near the coast, at least in my neck of the woods, you see this logo on a regular basis. I see it on the back windshield of a car sometimes daily. I am a salt lover, I will admit. I add salt to my food sometimes before I even taste it. I even put salt on my salad. When I was in college, a friend gave me one of those hamster "salt licks" for a birthday present. Yes, it was a gag gift, but I actually "used" it a couple of times. I finally got rid of it, because it just wasn't practical to break out a "salt lick wheel" when I had a craving. I'm pretty sure it made me look a little unstable.

As I sat in the elementary school pick up line yesterday, I started thinking how living the "Salt Life" could apply to living a Christian life or a more disciplined life. Have you ever looked up "salt" in the Bible? There are a lot of verses dealing with this word. Many times, especially recently, I have eliminated certain foods from my diet. Soda, chocolate, sugar...all of these things are great and I would not want to live forever without them, but they are not necessary for survival. Salt, however, is necessary for our bodies to function properly. When we don't have enough salt in our bodies, we become unbalanced and don't heal easily. It helps to transmit messages in the nervous system. Salt is also used as a preservative to keep food from spoiling. It was used before modern medicine to help heal wounds or to purify water. Salt when used in food serves to season it, to bring out the best in the taste of the food or to blend certain foods together. For all of these reasons, Jesus called His followers "the salt of the earth".

Guess what else salt does? It makes you THIRSTY. It makes you long for something. When you see someone who is "salty", do you long for what they have? To me, these people seem satisfied with their life. They possess true joy. They don't have to seek validation from the outside world. Other people in general are attracted to these people because they see something in them that they want to have as well. Did I just describe you? As Christians, that is what Jesus challenged us to do. We are supposed to preserve, freshen and sweeten the world with His word and to help heal His people with our deeds and actions. Most of the time I feel like Mrs. Dash...very flavorful, but not truly, genuinely salt. My goal is to surround myself with salty people so that they can season me and I can learn to season others. Jesus put us here to season the world with our presence, our words and our actions. As my thirst increases, I long to make others thirsty as well.

Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone. ---Colossians 4:6