As a stay-at-home mom, everyday things become learning opportunities for my kids. Many times, I set out to teach them something and the Holy Spirit uses the lesson to teach me. Today was one of those days.

My daughter picked up our salt shaker and curiously asked, “What’s this?” I told her that it was salt and that we use the salt to help our food taste better.

Immediately, I shared with her the scripture where Jesus tells us that we are the salt of the earth in Matthew 5:13. I told her that like the salt, we make things better.

She took her finger to put some of the salt on her tongue. I told her that you don’t eat salt by itself—it’s for the food. She laughed and moved onto the next thing, but I paused to really absorb this concept.

Salt is something that we all have in our homes. It’s an everyday thing—nothing too special in and of itself, but when it’s missing, you notice it.

And salt was not created just to hang out with other salt; it was created for food.

If we really are the salt of the earth, then where’s the ‘food’ that we are to season? Are we missing in the lives of others who need us to help them to be better?

Many times as believers, we tend to go into quarantine, isolating ourselves from the very world that needs our seasoning and preserving nature to make them better. Yes, there are certain situations that we should guard ourselves from, especially if we have a weakness in that area. But God’s intent was never for the body of believers to retreat.

Just like yeast—the other example that Jesus used to teach us about the Kingdom of God—we must be mixed with something in order to work. Salt and yeast by themselves are inactive. But once they come in contact with food, they come alive!

Let’s just face it, the world and those in it are full of sin and filth. Does that intimidate you? It shouldn’t.

Jesus surely wasn’t. He was amongst thieves, drunks, murderers, lepers, yet He became the answer to their problems right where they were instead of just hanging out in the temple and waiting for them to come to Him.

Is your spiritual excitement lacking? Are you feeling dormant in your Christian walk?

It may be that your active ingredient needs to be put to work in the lives of others.

Ask and believe God for opportunities to sprinkle your salt in the lives of those who have need of you.

Inevitably when we set out to be a blessing to someone else, our overwhelming Father jumps right into our lives to energize our faith and encourage us in our area of need.

Use your salt shaker and make this world taste better.

You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is not good for anything any longer but to be thrown out and trodden underfoot by men. Matthew 5:13

–by Mignonette Bailey