Matthew 5:13-16, Daniel 6:4-13

Josiah Parr considers how to express salt and light as a Christian

Let me tell you why you are here!

Do you ever wonder why God decided that once you had given your life to him, he would leave you here, rather than take you straight to heaven?

Simple things like this go through my mind all the time. I think that it would be a great advertisement for the Christian faith, if as soon as you've prayed that sinners prays BOOM! Heaven! The people around you would definitely want some of that! But God's ways aren't our ways, just as his thoughts are not our thoughts. So since we are all still here living this Christian life to the best of our abilities, the question remains. Why am I here?

'Let me tell you why you are here. You're here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth. If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste godliness? You've lost your usefulness and will end up in the garbage. Here's another way to put it: You're here to be light, bringing out the God-colors in the world. God is not a secret to be kept. We're going public with this, as public as a city on a hill. If I make you light-bearers, you don't think I'm going to hide you under a bucket, do you? I'm putting you on a light stand. Now that I've put you there on a hilltop, on a light stand-shine! Keep open house; be generous with your lives. By opening up to others, you'll prompt people to open up with God, this generous Father in heaven.' Matthew 5:13

As a family we love to watch cooking shows: Saturday Kitchen, Iron Chef, Chopped and especially MasterChef. My 4-year-old daughter even has a little crush on Jamie Oliver. There is a recurring theme within all these cooking shows and that is people forget to season their food. It plays out; you have 1hour to cook, START COOKING! Inevitably the judge will look at the creation in front of them and see the amazing effort that has taken place to get to that point, but upon tasting the food it becomes clear that they have forgotten the simplest ingredient, salt! How crazy is that?! Surely with the all the time and practice taken up to that point, something as simple as adding some salt to the dish would be easy to remember, right?

Have you forgotten the salt?

In the Christian walk there is a long list of ingredients, which need to be remembered: pray, go to church, read your Bible and being kind to your neighbour to name just a few. These are like a list of essential ingredients. Did you ever consider that all those things would be bland without a bit of seasoning? The Christian faith has to be more than all of this.

What is salt exactly?

Keep open house; be generous with your lives. With a lot of things in the gospel we tend to take simple principals and complicate them. In order to reach our friends we have to have a stadium with all the lights and pyrotechnics with a full band and someone who is a cross between a hipster and Jesus to open the word and preach to us.

No. Jesus gives a simple instruction to keep an open house and to be generous with your life.

I've got a local kebab shop, which I go to, to get lunch from time to time. I've become very good friends with the staff and I've even helped them move house. When things got hard for one of them he contacted me to pray for him. It didn't feel overly spiritual, but the impact of a few conversations and being generous with time and friendship means that I added salt into the relationship.

Turn on your lights!

My dad was a stickler for lights being left on in rooms we weren't in, so I was always getting in trouble for leaving unnecessary lights on. This is the complete opposite to how Jesus wants us to respond with our personal lights - let it shine, turn them all on and let people know there is something worth seeing.

Daniel disobeyed the King's command to only pray to him for 30 days. He chose not to do it in secret and did it right where everyone could see him and as loud as possible so it was undeniable that he was praying to God. He was living with his lights on!

I put this salt and light challenge out to the younger youth in our church and I was overwhelmed as they told stories of simple choices that had made big impacts. Jonny, who is a 14 year-old lad had walked by an elderly man almost every day on his way to the bus after taking up the challenge to be salt and light, so he began to engage in conversations with this man and who knows where it may lead.

It's our job to be the salt and let God be the chef and use us how and where he wants to.