Spiritwick

“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 underfoot." (Matthew 5:13) We've spent a lot of time on the beginning of this verse over the last several posts.  We've looked at how we, as salt, can be used to bring out the good flavors in others and in life, can be part of God's preservative plan through disciple-making, and were designed to be used in God's good deeds which makes us valuable commodities on this earth. It's time now, to look at the last two sentences in this verse though. "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 underfoot." That's the end of Matthew 5:13. Jesus said that. That's never felt good to me. I've never liked that part of the verse. I've barely even understood that part of the verse. I...

When I was in elementary school, my dad made me a necklace.  He crafted it with an amber heart as the centerpiece and then surrounded that with amber and hematite beads.  I adored it.  Everytime I saw it or thought about it, I knew that my daddy loved me, that he treasured me, and that he thought I was worth his effort. It became my most treasured possession.  There was nothing that I owned that had more value to me. This necklace that you see in the picture was by far my most valued possession growing up. When I first began thinking about the 3 characteristics of saltiness, I was excited about the "valuable" quality.  I figured I was going to get to find all sorts of verses about how God delights in us, how much He loves us, how He sees us to have tremendous value.  It was going to be like one giant self-esteem boost.  How fun!  However, as I began to really contemplate the concept of being valuable like salt, other considerations came into vi...

I'm not sure what you think of when you think of the word "preservative."  Maybe you immediately think, "Oh no! I'm supposed to avoid preservatives!"  Maybe you think, "that reminds me of a life preserver."  I tend to think more in the life preserver direction as I think about the concept of preservation personally, but as I really sought to understand the ins and outs of how believers are like salt, I decided to learn more about how salt actually acts as a preservative.  What I learned surprised me because of the words I was keeping in my head as I began my search.  When I think of "preservation," I think of life, but the words I kept reading involved death.  Salt acts as a preservative by killing off the microbes that would cause decay and disease.  Salt preserves through death! Upon this discovery, I was ready to abandon such a literal comparison of ourselves to salt.  After all, I was not prepared to sing the praises of preservation ...

Yesterday's post introduced this concept of how Christians are called "the salt of the earth" by Jesus.  If I'm honest though I have regularly regarded salt as a dull and commonplace mineral or seasoning, and I think there is often a similarly mistaken notion that Christians are party-poopers or big sticks-in-the-mud or just plain boring.  This is exactly the opposite of who and what we are called to be as the salt of the earth! If you are one huge stick-in-the-mud, then you’re doing this wrong.  Yesterday, I introduced the concept that as the "salt of the earth," we are actually supposed to be flavor-enhancing.  Like salt, we are supposed to enhance the good flavors in life and in others.  So, let's try to erase that dull, stick-in-the-mud sort of image. Instead, think about someone in your life that just seems to make your life better somehow, that brightens up your days, that brings out the best in you, the person that you'd call when you're ...

I really enjoy watching cooking competition shows like Iron Chef, Chopped and Cutthroat Kitchen. Despite the fact that I've been watching these types of shows for over a decade, I have sadly acquired no equivalent enjoyment of actually cooking. I have next to no kitchen skills myself, so I am fascinated as I watch all the skills and culinary knowledge displayed on these shows. However, even more than watching the actual cooking on these shows, I enjoy watching the judging process. They usually bring in some truly expert culinary judges and occasionally a gourmet celebrity as well. These judges are on such a high plateau that the comments I expect to emerge from their mouths are things like "What this dish is really lacking is a touch of acidity to brighten up the overall flavor palate" or "Unfortunately, this dish is missing any hint of umami that I usually look for in an entree." Obviously, these sorts of high-brow critiques do occasionally emerge, otherwise I ...

I had a whole hour to myself today, and I was shocked in that time to discover that I have had a fairly driving principle throughout my life.  Before I get to that though, let me back up.  In elementary school, I had a recurring nightmare.  It somehow epitomized my worst fear at the time even though it was clear to me even then that others would invalidate how traumatic it was for me if I told them.  The dream took place in the hallway of the Christian school that I attended, a place where I spent many hours in reality as my parents were both teachers and principals in the school.  In this dream, my mom would be standing in the hallway with a group of other teachers having a conversation.  Meanwhile, I would be running in terror for the hallway had filled with every evil character I knew from any story or movie. At both ends of this hallway were doors that exited to the outside, thus it was possible to run in a loop through this hallway, outside, and back t...

When I was a young child, my sister's favorite movie was "White Nights" starring the famous ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov.  At least once a year, she'd pull that VHS cassette out of the cabinet to re-watch the movie. For those of you who never had a Baryshnikov-infatuated older sister with whom to watch the movie repeatedly, the basic plot of this 1980s movie is that a Soviet ballet dancer (played by Baryshnikov) who has defected gets stuck back in the Soviet Union after his flight has to make an emergency landing in Siberia.  The Soviets want him to dance for their country again. (This is obviously because he's a freaking brilliant dancer...seriously, if you've never seen the man dance, go youtube him. If he'd lived in Ancient Greece, I'm pretty sure someone would have declared him to be some dancing demigod. Anyways...) The ballet-dancing, former defector wants to escape again.  It's a tense movie with some brilliant dancing thrown in.  Back ...