A Salty Peace

"You are the salt of the earth. Salt is good, but if the salt has lost its flavor, how will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.”Mark 9:50

When August came around when I was a teenager, my friends and I would argue over the best way to soften and age new jeans. This conversation would come about because soon we would be buying clothes for school, returning home and going our separate ways. This was years before sly manufacturers introduced acid wash and charged $100. We bought jeans for $6 to $10 usually from the local army navy store. I was blessed in this time of life to have friends I spent a good portion of my summer with in Cape May Point. We enjoyed the theoretical argument often more than any actual practice. I do remember that we finally agreed that ocean water made everything soft. The salt in the water softened things quickly. I also remember walking into the surf in brand new jeans, praying for softness, and praying that a miracle would happen and I wouldn't have to go back to school.

Jesus talks to his disciples about how they should be in the world. He has warned them to protect the children and the innocent and vulnerable. God's reign lives with them, he tells the disciples. And the followers are to be salt - flavor and softening to one another so that all may live in peace. Salt is a preservative, a flavor, a way of living with creativity and expression and also a softening agent which brings peace. It is very challenging to be all of these things.

Today I feel challenged to be salt in all its attributes and identities. I will be that pungent taste on my lips when I first dive in the ocean. I will be flavor to those who have lost their joy. And I will be soft so that peace might break forth when tensions and disputes threaten. May we all be God's salt today. May we be those willing to go into the world to be absorbed in the water so that all might be transformed by God's reign of peace.