Copyright 2023 Kat Silverglate
It was embarrassing. I think because I was oblivious to the fact that it had been happening since I left my hotel room that morning. We were at a legal conference. While packing for the event, I threw an old worn pair of white pants into my bag. They didn’t have much life left, but I’d broken them in the way you do clothing that seems to cooperate with a perfectly imperfect build. Let’s just say they made up for a multitude of poor dietary choices and missed workouts. Finding another pair that had my back(side) the way they did would take time and I always seemed to be in such a rush. So, in an attempt to extend their expired shelf life, and to distract from the frayed hem, I added some colorful blingy fringe to the bottom of each leg.
Toward the end of a frenetic day, a woman I was just getting to know, came toward me with a million-dollar smile and a carefully clutched hand. Clearly, she had something to share and was visibly delighted with the prospect of revealing it. Her excitement was contagious the way a child’s laugh is - you find yourself tickled before knowing why.
My face broke wide with expectancy.
“Will you just look at these treasures I’ve been finding all over the property today!”
She waited until we were sister-close and my head was conspiratorially bowed over her find before she gingerly let her fingers loose like she was protecting diamonds. Instead of white glistening jewels however, her cupped hand cradled glittery circles. I immediately glanced down at my hem which was now a tangle of unraveled, sparsely-beaded threads. As my face flushed, her smile got tender, and her voice bubbled like water. Like most moments that leave an indelible impression on your future framework, I don’t remember her exact words, but the essence of it went something like this:
“When I saw the first few of these on the floor at breakfast, I smiled. But then when I saw them again by the pool and in a conference room and in the lobby, I started to pick them up. The more I found, the more fun it became. Like a treasure hunt. When I finally saw you coming around the corner with your glittery hem, I giggled and thought, ‘I just have to show her what a trail of delight she has been leaving behind all day.’”
My eyes got salty wet. What little I had learned about her in our short time together was that she was a woman of deep faith. A woman full of a contagious joy. It exuded from her. You felt it when she entered the room and it lingered when she left. Her parting words stayed with me:
“Don’t you think it’s a great analogy for the way our life in the Lord should look? Leaving His fragrance behind wherever we go?”
It was a stunningly beautiful picture of a life transformed from the inside out. Not by anything done by us but by something done to us. It was that word picture in the sermon on the mount - you are the salt of the earth - sprinkled out in the world in earthen vessels bringing the Lord wherever we go.
Over time, that penetrating analogy went beyond the surface to a whole host of deeper questions. Convicting ones. No matter how much we love God, follow Him, seek Him… we struggle. We stumble, grumble and fail. Our pluperfect hot holy messes affect others. So, how do you do that? Leave a fragrance when you’re more than a little stinky at times? How do you avoid toxic positivity – a cover of joy that masks something else going on below the surface? How do you avoid pretending to be salty because that’s who God says you are? Or more, how do you avoid hiding until you are fixed? Or feel like you have it figured out?
How do we leave the Lord’s fragrance wherever we go?
In short, we don’t. He does. He leads. We follow. We go. We stay hot on His heels. We get out into the hurting world in the middle of our sanctification – in the middle of our slow growth – in the middle of our questions and our messes and our falling-up again and again. We grow as we go and He leaves the fragrance. And while that all sounds so basic and simple now, it wasn’t for the longest time.
More than a decade after my encounter with the woman named Grace, these words by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his book The Cost of Discipleship brought those scattered glittery circles flooding back along with her beautiful analogy and my convicting questions.
“Jesus does not say, ‘You must be the salt.’ It is not for the disciples to decide whether they will be the salt of the earth, for they are so whether they like it or not, they have been made salt by the call they have received. Again, it is: ‘Ye are the salt,’ not ‘Ye have the salt.’”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship
Bonhoeffer gracefully moves from Christ’s “blessed are” statements in the sermon on the mount to His “you are” statements. As he does, he moves us from an analysis of our identity [blessed] to our purpose [salt and light]. But, perhaps to put a more defined point on it, he separates the two sections into chapters and names the "you are" chapter by its defining mark -- The Visible Community. That shift draws attention to the difference between identity and purpose. A difference we often conflate or even miss. Identity is internal. Purpose is visible to others! Our purpose is to be out there in that hurting world. Available to others.
Salt is designed to be sprinkled out. It is not meant to stay in its container. Salt does not need salt. The hurting world needs it. On the heels of a global pandemic, a work-at-home movement, a cultural introvertism fed by digital technology, we need to be reminded that we are meant to get out into that day.
Our September Mission:
If you are receiving Mission Packs in the mail, go ahead and shake out the contents of your pack. If you'd like to receive them monthly along with these posts, go on over to theridiculoushour.com (hit the "Get Started" flag] and we'll get one out to you while supplies last! In your mission pack, you will find a packet of salt. It is attached to a small card that says Get Out into That Day! It is designed to fit easily in a wallet or by a computer or in a pocket!
In the Lord, we ARE the salt of the earth. Not, we have. Not, we must be. WE ARE.
For the next 30 days, consider carrying that salt packet with you as a reminder of your purpose -- to be sprinkled out. To get out into that day. To intentionally be with those in need. Talk to others. Serve them. Share the reason for your hope. At the end of each day in September, ask yourself: “Did I get out? Was I with others. Was He nudging me? Did I follow? Or did I stay in my container?”
Salt is made to be sprinkled!
Amen? Amen!
