Daily Devotion for Lent 2024, Day 9

“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything but is thrown out and trampled under foot."

                                                            Matthew 5:13 (NRSVue) 

We have so much salt, it sometimes gets pitched!

Growing up, my dad had high blood pressure and my mother stopped salting the food she prepared.  It was a seasoning I learned to do without and to this day salt carries a somewhat negative connotation for me.

However, if you eat out very much at all, you are going to get plenty of salt in your diet!

Our overabundance of this seasoning combined with easy access to refrigeration probably lets us read this statement from Jesus without much fanfare. But if we allow ourselves to return to an earlier time, salt was quite valuable.  There were salt taxes and it was a trading commodity.

Imagine Jesus telling you that you are valuable!  You preserve and enhance life!

The second piece of this verse seems to be a warning at first glance.  Beware of losing your effectiveness or hard-working attitude or joy or endurance or any number of positive attributes.  This doesn't sound like good news because all of us run out of positivity from time to time.  It may allow us to wonder, "When will I be trampled under foot?  It's only a matter of time!"

I wonder if this may have to do with the fickleness of people we encounter in life?  So many situations we run into seem to have a "what have you done for me lately?" vibe.  The idea that we can never slow down isn't biblical - just look at the institution of the Sabbath.

This saying may in fact be more closely connected to the previous verses on persecution.   Sometimes when we stand on the side of the good (hence, when we stand with the outcast or downtrodden), we may find ourselves used up.  Today, we speak of people in helping professions developing compassion fatigue.  

Our second General Rule is to do good.  But what if we've reached our limit and done all the good we possibly can?  We may feel that we've been trampled under foot.

In this instance, we recognize the third General Rule - to attend to our relationship with God through prayer (and other spiritual disciplines like reading this blog!).  And so in these situations, we may find our used-up selves being restored by a God who lifts up the downtrodden.  At these times, we return to the first part of the verse and hear God say - you are the salt of the earth!

Prayer for the day:  Loving God, allow us to share the goodness of this life with others.  May we enhance the joy of our daily encounters.  And when we get knocked down from time to time, it may be that we look over and see you on the floor with us.  And you smile and tell us that we are still salt to you no matter what.  May this assurance give us the confidence to arise once more.  In Jesus' name.  Amen.

 

Photo by Ben Sutherland via Flickr.com.  Used under the Creative Commons license.

New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.