Salt and Light

As I write this blog post I find myself a bit tired; not by long and arduous work but rather tired by the little things demanding attention that I feel rob me of greater focus on those tasks which to my mind seem more significant.  In every redeemed heart God places, as a part of his redemptive work, a desire for significance.  Indeed, it was Christ who looked at those following him faithfully and said, “You are the salt of the earth… You are the light of the world.”  Salt and light make a difference whenever they are found.  Salt and light are significant, noticeable, impacting.  

Today is a day in which I don’t feel salty or bright.  Perhaps today is a day in which you don’t feel particularly significant in the role God is calling you to play in the consummation of his kingdom.  But it is on the days that feel dim and saltless that we need to allow our theology to convince us of that which our feelings cannot.  Our feelings of spiritual insignificance are rooted in guilt and shame that come not from God but from his enemy the devil. 

How many times have you thought that you weren’t a “good Christian” or that you needed to do more for God?  Most of us are familiar with those ideas.  Those ideas of a “good Christian” and “doing more for God” are rooted in the false thinking that our significance, our saltiness and light are somehow things that we are ultimately responsible for.  And yet scripture teaches us that our spiritual condition is not based on some kind of external activity but rather on the internal reality of our redemption.  The wandering and wasteful son thought he was no longer his father’s because of his actions.  But it was the father who puts a robe on his back, sandals on his feet, and the family signet on his finger that lets him know he never stopped being his son.

So it is with us.  You don’t feel salty and bright.  How you “feel” about that does not change the fact that Jesus has called you both.  You ARE the salt of the earth and the light of the world.  So you “feel” like you have wandered and squandered away your status as God’s child.  It is not so!  You have been adopted and you are God’s own.  You cannot undo that.

It is in our striving to be significant that we lose sight of the fact that we already are- not because of what we have done or will do but because of what Jesus has done for us.  The key to living in the reality of our significance is in the irony of being still and simply knowing that God is God and that we are his.  So I sit bleary eyed and tired behind a keyboard desiring to do more.  But the truth is I am salty and bright, I am God’s son.  And no amount of activity or inactivity can change that.  Praise the Lord!

Grace and Truth - Scott Castleman