Merchants are famous for diluting things. They put water into wine to make the wine last longer (thus the phrase “watered down”). They mix grain into sausage so it appears to contain more meat than it does. To increase volume, drug dealers mix (or “cut”) cocaine with powdered laundry detergent, laxatives, and meat tenderizer (among other things), and cut marijuana with detergent and glass—anything to increase profits. And historically, even salt—once an expensive luxury—was diluted with sand. But if each seller or middle-man added a little sand, a batch of salt might eventually be diluted so often it “loses its saltiness” and becomes worthless. Then what is it good for?
“Now, salt is good, but if salt should lose its taste, how will it be made salty again? It is not fit for the soil or for the manure pile; they throw it out. Anyone who has ears to hear should listen!” Luke 14:34-35.
Jesus says we are the salt of the earth. He put us here to enhance preservation—that is, to help the world stay fresh and good and godly. We are here to slow the decay and destruction we see all around us, by blessing one person at a time, every day. And He put us here to flavor the world, or rather, to draw out the natural flavors already present in His amazing creation. Because salt, when used correctly, makes each food taste more like itself, not more salty. Salt draws out the unique flavor already present in foods. We can do the same: find and enhance the amazing “flavors” around us, both in people and in God’s creation.
But Christians can be so diluted with worldliness, with flavorless sand, we fail to do either. We can lose both our flavoring powers and our preserving powers.
Stay in the WORD, not in the WORLD.
Don’t be diluted. Fill up on scripture. Be a cup that is overflowing with God’s truth and God’s flavors.
God, show us where we are diluted, and fill us up with YOU. Use us.
ΑΩ
Household Words: 