Thursday Thoughts

November 2, 2023

Oh, how wonderful homemade bread smells as it is ready to come out of the oven! There is something that says comfort about the fragrance of freshly baked bread. I enjoy making yeast bread, putting all the ingredients together, mixing, kneading, and letting the dough "proof" before it is shaped into loaves or rolls. Bread is easy to make, just time-consuming. There aren't a lot of ingredients that go into bread dough but if you leave one out, the bread doesn't turn out as it should. I learned that lesson a long time ago. I was making a honey oatmeal bread that we liked but when it came out of the oven it hadn't risen like it normally did. When I tasted the bread, I immediately realized I had left out the salt. The bread tasted bland and the lack of salt had caused the structure of the bread to be dense. What a difference a little salt would have made to that batch of bread.

In Jesus' time, salt was important to give food flavor but also to preserve foods like the fish that they caught. The only way they had to preserve foods was by air drying, pickling, or salting. Salt was so valuable it was traded in much the same way that gold was traded. Salt is still used to preserve certain foods. I remember my parents salting the hams and shoulders they had carefully trimmed and cared for after hog butchering day in the late fall. Without the salt, the meat would have been ruined by rot and insects.

Recently, my mother and I went to Saltville VA in southwest VA to learn about the salt deposits that are found there and to see fossils and bones of Woolly Mammoths and other extinct animals, exhibits about Native Americans, the Civil War, and the manufacturing boom in this small community. Salt is still mined there today. There is so much history in this little valley that was once covered by an ocean leaving layers of salt deposits deep in the ground. The salt deposits were so important that for thousands and thousands of years, animals and people have lived and thrived in this little valley.

Salt is a simple compound but so vital. Perhaps that is why Jesus talked about salt when he was teaching people about its importance. After preaching the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told his listeners, including us, that we are the salt of the earth. He didn't teach us that we are to be like salt but that we are salt. We are to be salt at home, school, in the factory, in the office, everywhere we go we are to be salt. "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." Matthew 5:13

What does this mean? If we as Christians have no influence, do not attempt to right wrongs, make no move to correct injustices, have no words to speak against bigotry, and treat others with contempt and disrespect, we have lost our saltiness. We are no good in the Kingdom if we are too much like the world. Christians shouldn't rubber-stamp what the world is thinking and doing.

Salt brings out the best flavor of foods. We are salt. We are to bring out the best in people, in situations, and in the environment we are in. That is our mission, to bring our best and live out our beliefs with courage and conviction. Being salt as Jesus taught is adding meaning and purpose to our lives and to those we come in contact with.

Blessings,

Becky

Bridgewater UMC 

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