Too Salty?

Limit your sodium intake, this is advice we often hear nowadays. I'm afraid it's always been very difficult for me to do. Sometimes I jokingly refer to myself as a "salt-aholic." Even as a child my food usually got a "healthy" dose of that fine, white seasoning. Salt is now one of the cheapest things that we purchase in the grocery store, but this wasn't always the case. Long ago, when Jesus was speaking of Christians as being "the salt of the earth," it was a rarer commodity and therefore costly. Today, as his followers, we should try to bring out the best in those we encounter, just as salt brings out the flavor in food. And it has an even wider range of properties and uses.

Salt can be reviving. Like most little kids I had a string of goldfish over the years; they usually didn't last long. One day I found a goldfish floating belly up, and thought for sure this one was also a "goner." But my mother dropped a pinch of salt in the water; what a "shot in the arm" it proved to be! A "revival" had come to town! That little fellow perked up immediately, swishing around his bowl, good as new!

Preservation is something salt has been used for over the centuries. Long before refrigeration and freezing, meats and fish were kept for later use by preserving them in salt. And surely it has been God's people who have preserved the faith, and provided the food that saves men's souls.

There is even a healing property to salt. To cleanse and heal delicate tissues like eyes and throat, a solution of warm salty water is used. You see, germs cannot live in a salty environment, it breaks the walls of their cell membranes and they die. And if we lose too much salt through heat and exertion, it can cause dehydration and other severe symptoms. Our society is certainly showing signs that something is severely wrong - it has lost too much "salt!"

While it may now be dirt cheap in the stores, there is a desperate shortage of His "salt" in our land. And it will only be as we turn and seek this "seasoning" in our lives, that each of us can be revived, and that society as a whole can be healed and preserved.

Job 6.6 - A man complains when there is no salt in his food.

Ezekiel 43.24 - When you have finished this cleansing ceremony, offer another perfect bullock and perfect ram from the flock. Present them before the Lord, and the priests shall sprinkle salt upon them as a burnt offering.

Matthew 5.13 - You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything. (another translation states:) You are the world's seasoning, to make it tolerable. If you lose your flavor, what will happen to the world?

Mark 9.50 - Good salt is worthless if it loses its saltiness; it can't season anything. So don't lose your flavor! Live in peace with each other.