Have salt in your souls!

Mark 9:49-50

Our Lord and savior Jesus Christ has told His apostles many words that deserve to be duly heeded by anyone who prefers life. One of his undying advices reads as follows. For everyone will be seasoned with fire and every sacrifice will be seasoned with salt. Salt is good, but if the salt loses its flavor, how will you season it? Have salt in your selves and have peace with one another. Mark 9:49-50.

The word “Salt ” is very noticeable from this quote in that the Lord has used it repeatedly. This will naturally make us very curious and we will stop and ask if it has had special significance in the spiritual and secular life of human beings. The Holy Bible indicated that salt has been very significant since time immemorial. Flavoring food (Job 6:6), healing wound (Dan. 16:4), marking military victory (Judges 9:45), Serving as a means of exchange (Gra 4:14) and, most importantly, seasoning offerings to God (Lev 2:13) are some of its uses recorded in the Holy writ. This wills throw some light to us as to why the lord underscored it in His message.

The apostles were called to season this unpalatable world. To have salt in themselves was, therefore, a must it they have to change its taste. Our Lord was telling them to have some virtues if they have to successfully execute their calls. We should now ask what those virtues (salts) He wanted to plant in them could be. Many qualities that mark a Christian could come under this very comprehensive term.

As we are following suit, this epistle, which we are writing to you our dears in Christ will try to look in to, three of the cardinal salts (virtues) that we, as Christians need to live with. These three virtues to be focused here are Love, Meekness and perseverance.

•  LOVE

Christianity bases itself in love. It is the Love which none of our rhetoric has the power to say that has made the Lord indeed one of us. Thanks to Love, we talk not just about a too far as He was for millennia but about an Incarnate Savior who has done all we do minus or sins and has undergone all sorts of sufferings to take us back to the camp of life. Jn. 4:10.klklpoTherefore, if we are indeed housed in the authentic abode of faith to win the paradise, our lives need to be indispensably seasoned by Love.

Thus, “…you love one another as I love you…all will know that you are my disciples if you have love for another”. Says the Lord. Jn 13:34-35 “As the father loved me, I also loved you: abide in my love.” He reiterates /Jn. 15:9/ surely, this makes it stark clear that we the faithful can have unity with God only if we live in and for love.

This powerful flavor of spiritual life called love has two aspects –loving God, the creator and Loving fellow humans, the beings whom the Lord has willed to create in His own image. A certain lawyer happened to ask the Lord Christ what he should do to win the everlasting kingdom of life. The Lord has responded that he (the lawyer) shall love the Lord his God with all his heart, soul, strength, and mind. Plus, he shall love other people as himself. Luke 10:27. This underscores what was commanded in the Old Testament as well. Deut 6:5: Lev 19:18 St. John has also emphasized the merit of love in his different scriptures. As he has put it in his epistle, for instance, it is love that serves as a manifest to distinguish those who are for God form those who are for the Devil 1Jn 3:10.

Love is never dictated by time and other conditions. We are expected to unconditionally demonstrate our love for the Lord and for fellow human beings. In his epistle to the Romans, St. Paul has made this abundantly clear. Virtually noting negative or positive, present or future, should force us to let down our lord and our fellows 8:33-39. He also quotes a verse form the Psalter with which the latter has indicated the boundless sacrifice we the faithful need to pay if we have to set a living example; for others who shall be redeemed. As the saintly and majestic harpist, David, tells us, we should never be scared by harassments incurred up on us by heathens. Ps 44:22

Our loving hearts are expected to be wide open both for friends and foes .As we are aware, we worship the Lord who has sacrificed in flesh and blood not for those who loved film but for those who hated him. If Adam and Eve lived up to his words as a token of love, He should not have given himself to the atonement. To let us know what is expected of us, that is, loving enemies and lovers alike, he has said that to lobe only lovers is far short of being New Testament.

Unless we equally love those who curse and those who bless us, those who persecute us and those who treat us so warmly, we are not sons of the father, we are simply one of tax collectors who have no heavenly reward for their partiality. Matt.5: 43-48. A person may be our sworn enemy in this ephemeral world. And yet, what is never to be forgotten is that he what is never to be forgotten is that he is one whom the Lord has created in His own image and ransomed through his suffering. St. Stephen prayed for those who stoned him in view of this realization. Acts 7; 60. Thus, when we love a person be the so called enemy or otherwise we are not just paying respect to him but, through him., we demonstrate our love to the creator and to the price he has paid.

It is because human hearts are drained of love that we are nowadays witnessing wars, insecurities and all other sorts of horrors that have reduced our world in to a furnace. This is also felt in the lack of satisfactory changes when it come to church services that are being tarnished by the loveless ness of the hearts of so called ministers who are just giving a lip service to God while their spirits are far away from him. If indeed they were unified in the spirit if as was the case in the life of apostles, there is no reason that the bountiful grace of the Lord could not be witnessed in the fruition of their works. It was their love and commitment that bleed the Apostles with the Holy Spirit it who helped them convert thousands in just a day of preaching. Acts 2:1-42.

It is indeed wonderful to engage us in the service of God as per our gifts or service in preaching, singing, prayer or another is in fact a very lofty one. Yet, it should be executed under the auspice of love if it has to produce the intended result. Otherwise, our sweat would be in vane and we would only be like a clanging cymbal or a vanity of vanities. It is in View of this that St. Paul has taken love as “ the fulfillment of the law.” Rom. 13:10.

Thus, we have to live in love and discharge our calls in love and discharge our calls in love. We need to love our prayer, fasting, alms giving and other spiritual engagements we are involved in.

This has to be witnessed in our secular lives as well since we are expected to be constructive models. In our secular responsibilities, therefore, we need to demonstrate industry, responsibility, and other hallmarks of a well-nurtured and very purposeful Christian. And, all this shall be flavored by the salt it must be in Love.1cor 13:1-13:15:14.

2. MEEKNESS

Meekness is a firm realization that we are nothing unless the grace of God is with us. It is a fountain that flows from a humble heart. Meekness never does not amount to despising or hating oneself nor does it serve as a cover of laziness, which deters us from doing what we can.

The meek do their levels best to do the holy jobs they are called for. But, they are committed to say. “ We are unprofitable servants. We have some what was our duty to do. “ luke 17:10 . This was just the life of our fathers and mothers who have done a lot to the Christendom and the heathen. They covered up their graces and did all they could not to make their mighty works roar in broad daylight for they knew this would make them like the scribes and Pharisees who lobed to talk very high of their works in this world and got nothing in heaven. St. David was elevated in holiness to the extent of being taken as the heart of God. He, however, said, “… I am a worm and no man “ Ps 22:6.

St. Paul who has managed to become the light of the work and also considers himself the least of the Apostles and of all the saints. 1 cor.15: 9; Eph 3:8. This all is in conformity with the teachings of the Lord Christ who has extolled the value meekness has in front of Him. When he says, “ Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth”. And that we shall learn from Him since he is “…gentle and lowly in heart.” Matt. 5:5-29.

It is meekness that we are expected to offer to God. This is discernible from St David who has this to say…” The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit. A broken and a contrite heart these, O God, you will not despise “ Ps 50:17. St. Peter also advises that we shall live with humility since “…God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble “ 1 pet 5:5. It is quite obvious to us Christians that it was lack of meekness, which demoted Satanic, the archangel, to becoming as devil.

The lesson to be draw from this is that we need to avoid the feeling and act of liking down up on others by taking ourselves as the most important. Conceit works against piety. In fact, as the saying goes” pride goes before a fall!” Thus, whatever we have be it our wealth, knowledge or any other shall not inflate us and take us off the track of Christianity. We need to realize that all we have achieved or done is not from us and we shall give the credit to God. We have achieved, there is still a lot in front of us and we should not feel satiated by what we have already contributed .if we take the life if St. Paul as an example, he preferred to see what he has done only as the tip of the iceberg. That is why he writes, “…one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus” Phil.3: 13-15. So, reward is for those who believe that what they have done. However immense it might be, is only a droplet of the ocean.

As the playwright has put it, we must always have the heart to say,

When I recollect the effort,

We did exert in our past,

Profound is my regret,

Not for whatever we tried,

But for the immense we did not!!

In sum, we shall live up to the word of God who wants us to live with the salt of meekness and reap the benefits about which he and His saints have testified. Matt 23:12: Luke 1:52; 1 pet 5:5-6.

3. PERSEVERANCE

It is perseverance or patience that enables a Christian concludes his endeavor in victory. We are in a world that is destined to grow thorns and thistles. This presupposes that we will be very much tested until our ephemeral stay in this world is wound up. There will be all sorts of mysteries. It is perseverance that would bear the testimony of whether we are the gold or the second rate metals. Our saintly mothers and fathers never backtracked their promises to God until they concluded their holy missions. They have been rebelled, stoned, crucified, given away to lions, etc.

May God Bless us, Amen.