Matt. 5:13-16 Salt & Light

What is our role in the world around us? Salt preserves, prevents or at least holds back the natural order of decay. As much as I’ve tended to hate it, there is a distinctive required here. Something that sets the followers apart from the rest, but it’s not essentially something external and it isn’t meant to divide, but it should be real nonetheless. “That they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.” That isn’t the boastful parading of ones values and the differences between Christians and non-Christians, but the goodness of actions that lend themselves to being observed in the natural order of living ones life.

I am uncomfortable in the role of a missionary (though my friends Chris and Bridgette come to it quite naturally, it would seem). I am more apt to seem the similarities and divergent values across the groups I work and am associated with. With my faith I hold it as an unexplained personal reality, though I’m apt to explore it as an academic, balancing as many views as is somewhat practical. But I am remiss to tell someone what they have to do to come to the Kingdom of God. I will gladly share what I know and have experienced, but I haven’t seen it within myself to speak for God about what someone else has to do. When I’ve done that it hasn’t gone particularly well. Granted I did it mostly as a scared 15-year-old, but I’m just not comfortable speaking for God or taking that role. I’ll share, but I know that the more complete “testimony” is that one how one lives ones life. JBB