Salt

I’ve been remodeling a rental property. The tenants did a good job of cleaning. They only left one item in the house. A box of kosher salt. It has been sitting on the kitchen window sill watching me as I work on the floors and replace the cabinets.

School starts on September 8. I went in to my classroom a couple of days ago to get ready for the new year and noticed several boxes of kosher salt in my little storage room. Someone had left it there before Covid and before I had that room. I didn’t really pay attention to it last year, but I was struck the other day with how odd it was to have that in my classroom.

I’m watching the new season of Alone on Netflix. A couple of nights ago, one of the contestants (who also happens to be a teacher) was worried about her salt intake. She had been struggling to find food for about 22 days and confessed that she had been eating her mucus to maintain her salt levels. “Salt is vital for all bodily functions,” she said, bemoaning her situation.

Yesterday morning when I got into my car I heard a preacher talking about…you guessed it…salt. And what he said about salt was new to me.

The preacher was saying that as Christians we can’t be friends with the world. Many of us back down from confrontation and let the world go on about its dangerous road to destruction without ever saying a word. At work, we say nothing about evil going on in our workplace and then comfort ourselves by believing that we are just being peacemakers. “Blessed are the peacemakers,” we say…

But Jesus said, “You are the salt of the earth…” and salt does some pretty important jobs; not one of them includes being a peacemaker.

“What do we use salt for?” the preacher asked. The most important thing is probably to preserve food, to keep it from decaying so that we can be nourished during hard times. So that we will have food when we need it. He said, “The world is decaying. And we are hiding our salt!”

I thought about how many Christian and well-meaning teachers are fully on board with CRT, the LGBTQIA+ movement, abortion, and covid vaccination for our children. I haven’t personally seen a single teacher take an active stand against any of these ideas.

We are not doing our jobs as Christians if we approve of everything the world is telling us. We must stand in our workplaces and be uncompromising. We cannot be peacemakers when the world simply wants to destroy our religion. We must be salt! Otherwise, we end up getting run over and run into the ground by the world.

But if the salt lose its savour…it is good for nothing any more but to be cast out, and to be trodden on by men.

(Matthew 5:13)

Salt preserves things. We need to preserve tradition and history and not let it be destroyed by leftists who march to satan’s drum beat.

Salt clears the roads in winter. It melts the ice and makes it possible for us to see the narrow road we should be taking, even when it’s been iced over by hatred of the truth.

Salt stays where it is. In the ocean, when water evaporates the salt remains. It doesn’t disappear with a little heat from on high.

And lastly, salt reminds us not to look back. When Lot’s wife turned back and looked at Sodom and Gomorrah, she was turned into a pillar of salt. She stood as a constant reminder to everyone to do what God says and not to look back at the world.

If you want an easy memory verse, try this one:

Remember Lot’s wife!

Luke 17:32

One way or another, you are salt. You can be salt to slow the decay of the world. Or you can be salt that is trampled on by the decaying world.

Preserve the truth,
clear the way,
stay where you are,
and remind others to do the same.

Stay salty my friends.