“In many cultures, it is considered unlucky to spill salt, due to very old superstitions. Fortunately, many cultures also have a solution to the problem, which usually involves throwing a pinch of salt over your shoulder or making a similar offering of salt. The superstitions surrounding salt may seem confusing to modern humans because salt seems so ubiquitous, but knowing that it was once incredibly valuable can change this perspective.
The most basic reason for considering it unlucky to spill salt has to do with its cost. For thousands of years, salt was an extremely rare commodity. It was difficult to extract, and as a result salt was very expensive. Many major trading routes were set up to carry salt, people were paid in salt, and salt was sometimes worth more than its weight in gold. Therefore, spilling salt was considered wasteful, since salt was a precious resource.”
The other day in church I was listening to a sermon on being the salt of the earth. He talked about how we Christians bring flavor to the world and while I listened the Lord added to this meaningful message.
Salt:
There are a variety of different types of salt, table salt, iodized salt, kosher, sea, and rock. Each of these has many uses in our lives. It has reportedly more than 14,000 uses with cooking only making up about 4 percent of all salt manufactured each year! According to www.asianonlinerecipes,com we can trace salt back to BC when in was mined in Salzburg, Austria. At one time salt was believed to be a deterrent for Satan which was why people would sprinkle salt along the thresholds and in the corners of new homes. Salt can be used to soften water, mixed with vinegar to a thick paste it can clean your silver, mixed with hot water, salt can rid you drains of bad odors. You can clean up spills such as oil and egg by covering the spill with salt. It removes tea and coffee stains, sterilizes sponges, kills weeds, and deters ants, as well as my mother would tell me to use it, as a gargle for sore throats. But when we think of salt we think of taste first, and then maybe as a preservative for meats among other foods.
Salt has long been a valuable resource in our lives, in fact according to http://www.madsci.org/posts/archives/2001-03/985293756.Me.r.html the human body “contains approximately 0.15 percent by weight chlorine and 0.15 percent by weight sodium.” which is the makeup of table salt.
Salt is mentioned numerous times in the bible. In Genesis 19:25-27 Lot’s wife looks back and is turned into a pillar of salt. To this day, stand a pillar of salt that resembles a woman in the area believed to be where she turned to look back on her life in that city. As offerings in Leviticus 2:13, Ezekiel 43:24, and Mark 9:49. In 2 Kings 2:21 God ‘healed’ the water. “Then he went out to the spring and threw the salt into it, saying, “This is what the Lord says: ‘I have healed this water. Never again will it cause death or make the land unproductive.’”
Matthew 5:13 says: “you are the salt of the earth. But if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.”
(When salt lost its saltiness, it was thrown into the streets to help create a more solid ground to walk on.)
We are the salt of the earth, we bring flavor to the world. Not in taste necessarily, but in character and essence. We give the world personality. But we also do something else,
“34 Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.” Matthew 24:34.
We preserve the earth.
Have you ever noticed that a town without people – goes to dust? A house which has been abandoned becomes dangerous to enter, while that same house lived in will last more than 100 years!
A garden dies, grass goes to weeds, cities die, and people who feel absolutely no love die a painful degenerating death.
Adam and Eve were placed in the Garden of Eden to care for it. When they were banished because of the sin they committed, the garden died.
We give flavor to the earth and we must never lose that essence, we must not lose that flavor by rejecting God or we will die.
We preserve the earth by caring for our surroundings, keeping it clean, beautifying our neighborhoods, caring for what needs to be cared for. When we stop preserving our land, it will die a painful deteriorating death. And that is exactly what we are doing. We are killing our world by thinking “someone else will pick up the trash.” “Someone else will care for the animals.” “I didn’t vandalize that park, why should I have to fix it back up.” “Someone else…someone else…”
We ARE the salt of the earth, and we need to never lose its value.
We must celebrate the love of God with all, those we love and those we don’t like. We must care for our earth by being willing to bend down and pick up a pop can that someone else didn’t care about.
We must never lose, because it is then when this generation will pass away.
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