Today’s Podcast
Today’s Bible reading plan:
Read it in a year – Isaiah 7-11
see the whole year’s plan [here](http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.pdf)
Today’s Devotional
Matthew 5:13
Jesus: You, beloved, are the salt of the earth. But if salt becomes bland and loses its saltiness, can anything make it salty again? No. It is useless. It is tossed out, thrown away, or trampled.
What do Jesus’ words mean for us today?
We don’t think much about salt today. We put it on our food for flavoring, but that’s about it. But even today, if you really look at the many uses for salt, you find what a useful compound it is. In the kitchen it can be make things salty or take the bitterness out of some foods. It can preserve meat, fish, and foul to allow you to keep those things outside of refrigeration for long periods of time without harm. It helps you peel eggs, makes egg whites whip better, prevents cheese from molding, and keeps milk from spoiling.
You can use salt to clean a greasy pan or keep things from sticking to a pan. You can put out a grease fire with it. Or shine your silver with salt. You can keep your mirror from fogging with a saltwater solution and you can remove stains from your clothes with salt. Salt can clean your teeth, relieve sore muscles and aching feet, soothe mosquito bites and bee stings, and help a sore throat.
Salt was so important in ancient times, Roman soldiers often received part of their pay in salt. Our word salary finds its root in the word salt. The word salad finds its history in the word salt because people would sprinkle salt over raw greens to make them more palatable. Salt was highly prized and most governments restricted its production and taxed it because of its universal use.
Now, are you beginning to get a feel for how important salt was for those who initially heard Jesus’ words? He tells His followers, “You are the salt of the earth. You are the single most popular condiment, the single most important spice, the single most taxed item in the world. Something not just used by everyone, but universally needed by everyone because you carry the message from God to the rest of the world.”
Meditate a little on Jesus words for a minute. You are the salt of the earth. Think about what He was telling you and me. Without salt, you die. Without salt, the world is not only flavorless, but nothing alive as we know it can exist. You, as one of Jesus’ followers, hold a crucial place in His kingdom. You might think yourself an unimportant cog in the wheel of the intricate machinery of God’s universe, but you are. Think about a Swiss watch. Hundreds of single gears work together to make the watch operate with high efficiency and accuracy, but remove one of those tiny pieces and the watch no longer works. It will stop and until the watchmaker replaces the missing piece, the watch continues to keep inaccurate time or remain at a halt.
God wants every part in place so His plans work perfectly. Can He make allowances for your absence? Yes. Will He work around you and without you if He must? Yes. But that is not His plan. His plan includes you in His garden, in His home, the one He’s building with your wants and wishes in place. Holes in His plans are not what He wanted when He created the world, but God also wanted men and women who would willingly follow the path He wanted them to take, not creations that followed like robots follow their programming instructions.
So He gives us a choice. We can be salt for Him. Useful. Flavorful. Giving life and utility to the world around us in the manor He chooses in His overall plan for the world and His individual plan for each of us. Or we can choose to take our own path. But when we do, we are like that salt that looses it’s saltiness. It’s like the salt mined from the ground over which water flowed to removed the pure mineral leaving asphalt, useful only for paving roads. So when the “salt [mined from the ground] loses its saltiness, can anything make it salty again? No, its useless. Tossed out, thrown away, or trampled.”
Am I going to allow the world to let me lose my edge, my saltiness for God? Am I going to let the world decide that I will not be useful to God and His kingdom? Am I going to lose my enthusiasm and excitement for the things of God after all the blessings He gives me from day to day? Am I going to just stand by and let His plans go on without me? I know God’s plans will be accomplished. I know everything He wills finally comes to fruition with or without me. God doesn’t need me, but I need Him. And I want to be a part of His glorious plans. I want to be on His winning side. I want to experience the greatness of His kingdom.
I can only experience God’s kingdom by maintaining that intimate relationship with God that keeps my spirit pure, like the purity of salt. Nothing added, just plan sodium chloride. I must operate like that salt mine. I must let God throw out all the impurities, all the asphalt, so that all that’s left is the pure salt. However He chooses to do that is His business. Sometimes it will take His gentle prompting to teach me. Sometimes, it might take pretty tough discipline. Sometimes it will bring me joy and happiness, and sometimes it will bring me pain and sorrow. But I know that with God in charge of the mining operations, He can keep me in perfect balance so that I can be salt to the world, or my neighbor, or my family, as He chooses me to be.
How about you? Do others see you as salt or asphalt?
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