Poured Out

Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men. Matthew 5:13 (KJV)

      It sits in my cupboard in the pretty glass container full of potency and able to do wonders for the taste of bland food. At our house we use sea salt in a grinder but until I take that container out of the cupboard and then grind the salt so that it leaves the shaker and pours out onto the food the salt is of no use. No amount of talking about the salt or its wonderful flavor will do any good. We can teach classes on using the salt, make videos about the effectiveness of the salt, give seminars on the power of the salt, and pray that the salt works according to its design and purpose. We can even gather all the salt from the neighbors and put it in the cupboard with our salt but until that salt is ground out of the shaker and put on the food it is of no use. Salt must be spread around. It must be poured out.

      You are the salt of this earth. Sitting in the salt container and singing praises to the source of saltiness doesn’t help the world. We cannot expect the world to come into the church anymore than we can expect the eggs to jump off the skillet and into our salt shaker at home. That’s just backward! It’s not how it works and everyone knows it. So why do we think that the world is going to come flocking to our church and get salted? God’s people must be poured out into the highways and byways, we must be ground into the slums and ghettos, we must be rubbed into places of employment and yes, we must penetrate the schools and even the government. Jesus knew that to accomplish the Father’s will we needed to be salty emissaries of supernatural origin.

     A chef will pour out the seasoning and then rub it into the meat. This is done for both preserving and seasoning. We must be in the world but not of the world. We carry the Gospel Message. We remind our neighbors of God’s love and mercy in every action that we take. We are carriers of His grace and reflect His glory, not in the pew at church but in the bleachers at school and the cubicle at work. We visit the neighbor and the salt can’t help but shake loose as we are ground and shaken by this life. That is what shakes the flavor of God from His children – life! The everyday ups and downs, the mundane and the extravagant, the victories and the losses should all serve to grind out the flavor that is contained in earthen vessels, Jesus in us poured out to the world as we make Him known.