SALT OR SALTY PILLAR

Let's talk about salt. No, not the kind that you throw on the sidewalk to melt the ice or the kind we throw in a pot of stew or sprinkle on a homemade pretzel.

Let's talk about the kind of salt Jesus said we are to be in this world:

"You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden under foot by men." Matthew 5:13

Yes, He wants us to give this world the flavor of God - of His love, of His holiness. He wants us to act as preservatives in a rotting world. Let's think about it. What does that mean to you?

Now let's talk about what we are NOT to be - a hardened, stay-put pillar of salt. Lot's wife, instead of becoming the salt of the earth, became something salty but not what God intended for her.

"But Lot's wife . . . looked back, and she became a pillar of salt." Genesis 4:21

How did that happen? How did she become forever frozen in time and place? She looked back. Did she look back because she was sad to leave the place of sin where she and Lot lived? Was she already missing her old place that was scheduled for destruction? For whatever the reason, she did not move ahead in her life but was stuck right there - being a salty pillar, of no use to God except as a bad example.

God tells us that if we do look back, this is what we should see: "And you shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you . . . ." Deuteronomy 8:2

Yes, we are to remember all that God has done in our lives and to learn from the lessons He has taught us and the mercies He has given us. Yet we are also admonished to:

Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." Philippians 3:13-14

Let us set our eyes, hearts, minds and souls on God. He has our days planned out. We just need to walk in what He gives us to be and do so that we remain salt, a healthy form of salt.

Heavenly Father, thank Your for stretching out my life ahead of me. Please help me not to look back or too far ahead but to live in the NOW place as Your child. In Jesus' name. Amen.