When our daughter Lauren was 12, Rod asked her to write about what it meant to be the “salt of the earth”. Here is what she came up with!
You are the salt???!!!!
What on earth?
I am human, not salt, human and salt don’t mix!, (Unless you’ve been told not to look over your shoulder, and you do it, but that’s another story!)
What could this possibly mean?
I guess that’s kind of how I felt when I first heard the phrase, “You are the salt of the earth”. Well, I did a little research, (Thanks to some prompting from you!), and I reckon I’ve solved the mystery.
Using a very useful concordance, (Thanks Mum), I looked up ‘salt’ in the bible. There were several mentions of salt in the bible, but I found the one I wanted in Matthew chapter 5, verse 13. The section was titled, “Salt and light”. Here’s what I found out:
“You are the salt of the earth. But if the 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”.
After reading that, I thought it might be good to get a second version of the same message. Speaking of messages, I used the message bible as my second source. This is what the message version says:
“Let me tell you why you are here. You’re here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavours of this earth. If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste Godliness? You’ve lost your usefulness and will end up in the garbage”.
So, by this point, I thought I knew what was going on, but after reading the passages surrounding the actual verse, I found out even more.
Matthew chapter 5, verses 14 to 16 follow on from verse 13, and sort of explains the first verse a bit more.
The N.I.V version says:
“You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden.
Neither do people light a lamp and place it under a bowl. Instead they put it on a stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they might see your good deeds and praise your father in heaven”.
The message bible says:
“Here’s another way to put it: You’re here to be light, bringing out the God colours in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We’re going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light bearers, you don’t think I’m going to hide you under a bucket do you? I’m putting you on a light stand. Now that I’ve put you on a hilltop, on a light stand-SHINE! Keep open house, be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you’ll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven”.
Now, You didn’t ask me to give you a bible lesson, so now I’ll get down to business. This is the part we’ve all been waiting for, it’s……
My Review!
Yes, that’s right; it’s time for me to tell you what I’ve learnt from this exercise.
So, get ready, I’m about to start!
Firstly, I learnt that I am supposed to represent salt, but you already knew that, so I’ll just explain how to be salt, and why God wants us to.
How to become salty:
It’s easy, really. You don’t have to be real salt, (As in ‘the-stuff-I-put-on-my-broad-beans-to-try-and-get-rid-of-the-taste’ salt), when Jesus said that, it wasn’t meant literally. To make things easier for me, I’ll do a codeish kind of thingamajig.
Salt=light
i.e. You are the salt of the earth=you are the light of the earth.
Ah ha! So what does salt have to do with light? Huh, huh, answer that for me!
Actually, I don’t want you to answer for because this is supposed to be your question for me, not my question for you.
I’ll answer my own question.
To do that though, I’m going to read the salt passage, and then in brackets, (Like this), put the word ‘light’ in the place of the word ‘salt’. I’ll put brightness in the place of saltiness, ect ect ect.
Let me tell you why you are here. (Let me tell you why you are here). You’re here to be the salt seasoning that brings out the God flavours of this earth.(You’re here to be the light that exposes God’s glory on this earth.) If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste Godliness?(If you lose your brightness, how will people see the light of God Godliness?) You’ve lost your usefulness and will end up in the garbage.(You’ve lost your light and will end up in the dark.)
So you see, they both match up.
Now the gist of what God is saying here is that it takes an extremely blonde person to light a lamp, and not let it shine by covering it up.
Now the gist of what God is saying here is that it takes an extremely blonde person to buy some salt, and let it lose it’s saltiness.
Now the gist of what God is saying here is that it takes an extremely blonde person to know God for themselves, and not share his love.
So, the salt brings out the flavor.
The flavor is God’s love
We are the salt.
We bring out God’s love.
We bring God’s love to the rest of the world.
To wrap up, I’ll just make my point completely clear. The salt (Us) brings out the flavor (God) to the mouth/taste buds (The non Christian world), so that the mouth/taste buds (The non Christian world) can taste the flavor (God) more, through the salt (Us), being there to help. That’s our job.
