Rev Alan Millar: Adding flavour to the lives of others

It was always a treat to watch my mother baking.I stood, nose high to the table as she mixed the ingredients for a cake. Patience, it is said, brings its own rewards, and for me it did. It’s how I received my limited knowledge of cooking, like stew.

I learned that a pinch of salt enhanced its flavour. Salt has many uses, medicinal, preserving food etc. It was its preservative qualities that made it such a sought-after commodity thousands of years ago. Wars have been fought over salt and some Roman soldiers would have even receive salt as their wages.

So, when Jesus told the disciples they were the salt of the earth, they may have been a little confused as to what He meant.

Basically, He was telling them that they were the means whereby the world would be flavoured by God’s love, grace, mercy, compassion, kindness, and forgiveness. In other words, they were to be just like Him.

That is how they would add flavour to the lives of people with whom they shared the gospel. The fruits of the spirit, according to the apostle Paul, emanates from God’s love, which we read about in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8b, where he explains how the love of God affects us, and others. First, he tells us that love ‘is patient, love is kind’. Then he tells us what it is not – ‘it is not proud, boastful, doesn’t lie’, and much, much more. What Paul is describing is God’s pure love and it is that kind of love we are to show to the world, to add flavour to the lives of others, to be the salt of the earth.

But its preserving qualities are perhaps what the church is all about, because the soul of mankind is rotting through sin and depravity. The quality of salt, spiritually speaking, can ensure that the corruption of the world does not contaminate the church, and the church, while it remains, ensures that society will not decay until Christ comes again. Christians, as the salt of the earth, are vitally important in God’s plans for mankind’s redemption.

May all who follow Christ be salt in our homes, communities, places of work, wherever we meet others, and let others taste and see that the Lord is good.