You obviously recognize this as Salt, right?
Then he held up another bag with a substance that looked like this:
While everyone readily recognized the previous item as salt, it took quite some time for him to get the correct response to the question of what this second ingredient was. Did you recognize it also as salt?
The point was simply this, taken from Jesus' words to his disciples (and to us) that we are to be salt and light: the first item we recognize easily as salt, because it is in its refined form. The second bag of salt looked more like dirt. That's because unless salt is trampled and refined, and set apart from its natural environment, it looks like dirt! The Pastor reminded us that to be in this world and not of it, means that if all the salt were removed....meaning US as believers...all that would be left would be dirt! We have a responsibility to be the salt that brings out the God-flavors in this world (as the Message paraphrase puts it).
I appreciated the visual image and reminder. Let's all dedicate ourselves anew to BE SALT in this "dirty" world! We are here expressly for that purpose.
Blessings!
3 comments:
Happy to see a new post and this WAS a really good reminder. Getting dirty is not necessarily fun but staying "refined" can't be the plan! Praying for ya'll!
Wow! Great object lesson. Thanks for sharing. As you can see, I have raised my head from my summer oblivion. (When I saw the hundreds of posts unread on my Google reader, I almost gave up. However, I am persevering like a good soldier.) Anyway, it was good to catch up with you a bit. Thanks always for the kid stories. They really make my day! We need to chat sometime. I miss you!
That is a great lesson...and never more relevant than now as parents. So hard to live in a manner that we are faithful to instill what we feel called to teach (in the little time we are given) but also be light to the darkened corners of the communities we live in.
I feel like I need to hear an update from you....how is the church? how are you feeling? No pressure, but know I am thinking of you. I think I've been more clued into your thoughts on church transition because we just went through that (are still going through that honestly) and quite honestly it just wasn't very easy.
I was very inspired by your summer project of making a states book. I actually talked with Cole about doing something similar (after being inspired by you). He wanted to look up the midwest. I promised him he could print all the info we found (usually not allowed or we would NEVER have paper or ink!) and he was really thrilled. Of course, we haven't actually gotten around to doing it yet, though... :-)
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