How Does Salt Lose Its Saltiness?
It’s 2 pm on a weekday and I’m driving to Walmart. I have a list of groceries, and an hour to myself. It’s been a week since Mike completed field training. He is a cop. This is our life now—crazy schedule included. There’s the budget that we just can’t seem to meet. The house we wish we owned. The longing to establish some kind of routine for my kids. The college fund that hasn’t been set up. The hand-me-down couch. The two cars that are both over ten years old. The door I wish I had a fall wreath for.
A thousand ways to be distracted. A thousand things that
seem necessary.
And yet, I can’t shake the story I read yesterday. The
headline: “A Global Slaughter of Christians but America’s Churches Stay Silent.” And inside the article: the story of one woman, Rasha, who called her fiancé’s,
Atef’s, phone. Instead of hearing the voice of the one she loves, an unfamiliar voice told
her that Atef’s throat was slit for refusing to convert to Islam. Before that
voice ends the conversation, he mocks her with these words: “Jesus didn’t come
to save [Atef].”
Atef lived in the reality that he would have a choice, to
deny Christ or to live for him. A choice that might cost him his life.
A choice he made at knife-point.
And really, I have that same choice every day. That decision
might not cost me my life… but it might cost me my soul. Will I deny Christ?
The decision is subtle here between Newport Beach and the
Hamptons with our strip malls and freedoms, where we sing of blurred lines and
how we can’t stop and we won’t stop. Where there is worry about housing prices
and the job market and the government shutdown… will I deny Christ or live knowing that He is my Daily Bread? Where
I get wrapped up in schedules and how my life has changed… will I deny Christ or live knowing Him as my Center, my Constant?
Where there are things like Miley Cyrus spinning out of control and whether transgender
should be allowed to choose which locker-room they prefer… will I deny Christ or live knowing the God who IS Love? Will I live
distracted? Will I live for stuff? Will I hide my head under a pillow and
pretend there aren’t Christians who are being martyred and imprisoned daily
because that reality is terrifying?
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This Saturday we went to an evening service. The pastor
spoke on salt and light. In the passage Jesus poses this question: “If salt has
lost its saltiness, what good is it?” (Matthew 5:13)
How does salt lose its saltiness?
I think Jesus was intentionally asking something that would
baffle. Salt doesn’t lose flavor. It isn’t natural or normal, just like light
doesn’t fail to change a dark room. So what is a Christian that denies Christ?
That doesn’t change their environment? That doesn’t make someone thirsty for the
only One who really satisfies? That doesn’t live in the reality of who Jesus is
and what He promised He’d do?
Syria seems like a hard place to be a Christian right
now, but I think America might be harder.
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As I was driving feeling both convicted and burdened for my
brothers and sisters on the other side of the planet, I turned up some
Delirious.
“My heart, it burns
for You. And my heart burns for You.”
I belted those words through stinging hot tears, as though my
words could be the fireplace poker awakening a barely-smoldering fire. My heart burns for You. Not for stuff. Not
for home-ownership. Not for an earlier bed-time or better routine. Not for
stability. But You. The desire of You. The holy pursuit of friendship with You.
Just give me Jesus.
I don’t want to live denying Christ. I want to live like He’s
changed me to my very core… because He has.
I arrived at two conclusions today:
1. I have no idea what the proper response of the American
church is to the slaughter of Christians in Egypt, Kenya, Pakistan, and Syria.
But I do believe prayer is the one clear thing we can do… the one clear thing
we are called to do.
2. The only way to make it as a Christian in America is to
realize we are deciding whether or not to deny Christ everyday. Perhaps this a simple truth, but I do believe we need to
meet with God daily… to burn. To light the fire afresh. To burn away the cares
of this world, the distractions, and remember the one thing that really
matters: Knowing Jesus. Not knowing about Him. But Knowing Him as friend.
By Grace,
Amanda Conquers
Here’s that Delirious song, Obsession:
Linking up with the #TellHisStory community
