You ARE the Salt

"You are the salt" not "You should be the salt"! The disciples are given no choice whether they want to be salt or not. No appeal is made to them to become the salt of the earth. Rather they just are salt whether they want to be or not, by the power of the call which has reached them. "You are the salt" not "you have the salt." It would diminish the meaning to equate the disciples' message with salt, as the reformers did. What is meant is their whole existence, to the extent that it is newly grounded in Christ's call to discipleship, that existence of which the Beatitudes speak. All those who follow Jesus' call to discipleship are made by that call to be the salt of the earth in their whole existence.  - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

 “You are the salt of the earth. But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor? Can you make it salty again? It will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as worthless.

Matthew 5: 13

What a restful, sabbatical thought Bonhoeffer's is.   I do not have to strive and strain to become salt.  I do not have to work and plot to throw the salt around the world.  I am simply called to BE what Grace has made me to BE.  Salt.  I can lose my saltiness.   Where does that saltiness come from?   It comes from Him, the Great I Am.   Saltiness comes from being with the Great Being.   

My anxious heart still wants to come up with its own salt-making strategies: ten steps to making salt or my five-year plan to becoming more salty.  Jesus says, "Come."    Joining an institution, becoming a spiritual person of note or learning a new skill for ministry is the way to be salty.  Jesus says, "My burden is light."  What should I be doing Lord?   Nothing I do matters.  Jesus says, "And I will give you rest."

Does my heart yearn for significance or for Him?  I am already salt.  I have been given saltiness.   I am already potent.  When I've lost direction, when I am lost, when I am sad, when I feel small, I have not lost a mission or a purpose. Instead,  I have lost my saltiness, my Savior and my Lover.  The only task then is to do what Jesus did to go away to a lonely place and pray.  Meditate on His words to me like "salt". My joy and my saltiness made new.   He promises to make my journey potent with the Kingdom.