Salt and Light

Change the world! Gung ho! Can you hear it to the rant of “S! A! L! T! Salt and light! Ra, ra, ra!”?

Goals!

Next steps!

Chart our plans!

Social justice, political reform, legal advocacy, donating money, evangelization campaigns, scientific debates, etc.

These are good. Do not get me wrong.

But, I look at the context: 

"You are the salt of the world." Follows: Blessed the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, those who hunger and thirst, the merciful, pure in heart, peacemakers, and persecuted. For you all, the poor, meek, are the light of the world, the salt of the world.

Really? Those know, for which it is so clear, that they have nothing and are nothing? No voice in the world? Those who have suffered losses and are reeling? Those who are unfulfilled, longing for more? Those who will turn a cheek? Those who are rejected and reviled, marginalized? These are the world changers?

And me? Lord, me the salt and the light? Sometimes it’s hard enough to get out of bed in the morning, to get through my day. So how am I supposed to be a world changer?

Salt and light are salt and light by their nature. They are. They are present. There is a ministry by presence. Even when poor, weak, overwhelmed together the church as a body is light, a lampstand. By our existence.

The existence of a hodgepodge, unified-by-Christ-because-there-is-nothing-in-each-other (no race, social status, gender, hobby, interest, education level) that unites us otherwise that meets on the corner of the local street.

The existence of an often-throughout-history politically and economically underprivileged group thousands of years later.

The existence of a group that comes to sing not to a known and celebrated band that stokes our adrenaline but to an invisible God who doesn’t always answer all of life’s questions and doesn’t always make us feel good but who we trust and praise and love and adore.

We are

By existence

Salt and light.

Individually and corporately.

“Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation” (1 Peter 2:12).

Salt and light are steady--salt is stable substance and the sun always comes up and a candle may waiver but it keeps on burning. We are salt and light by being faithful. In our poverty, our mourning, our hunger and thirst, if we still claim his name, still quietly love him, we are salt and light. The world wonders why someone can persevere with hope. The world wonders why someone knows this world is not all there is. The world wonders why someone still loves God when he only seems to have allotted them a less-than-comfortable-by-American-standards life. We are faithful lights, candles burning bright, a dim wick not snuffed out.

“I know you are enduring patiently and bearing up for my name's sake, and you have not grown weary” (Rev. 2:3).

“Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted” (Heb. 12:3).

“May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the steadfastness [perseverance] of Christ” (2 Thes. 3:5).

We are salt and light because of he in us. I cannot, we cannot be salt or light on our own. Rather, we bear this treasure in jars of clay. We are hidden in Christ; he is our life (Col. 3:4). We never change the world—no matter how strong, powerful, charismatic, influential. Never. But God chooses the foolish things of the world to make his power and life manifest. It is he who changes the world.

“For we also are weak in him, but in dealing with you we will live with him by the power of God” (2 Cor. 13:4).

“But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us” (2 Cor. 4:7).

The kingdom grows like a mustard seed. It grows among the poor and weak and needy who lean completely on him in their daily burdens, weakness, bad news, bills, crises, and little-things-that-break-the-camel’s-back.

Each quiet day of faithfulness

 a way to be light and salt

because of God’s great power

in the minute and quiet.