Be Salt!

Posted: 08 Jun 2009 09:00 PM PDT

2 Cor 1:18-22 / Mt 5:13-16

Heroes energize us and draw us forward. Sports heroes regularly do what seems impossible — run the mile faster than ever, swim the channel in record time, sink the longest putt ever recorded. Entrepreneurial heroes put together deals that are beyond imagining, and suddenly, the high-rise rises, the dream computer hits the market, and the wonder drug is available at our neighborhood counter.

Holy heroes astonish us with their goodness — the pope becomes the key player in liberating eastern Europe, Mother Theresa holds to the end to her course of caring for the poor, and the old woman down the street doesn’t falter as she begins her thirty-first year of caring for her retarded son.

Heroes challenge us to get our lives and our commitments right. “Be faithful!” they say, “and hold to course. Don’t lose your way. You are salt, and you can bring out what is best in things and preserve what is best in things — just the way salt does — if you don’t forget who you are.”

Don’t forget. Be salt: Bring out the best and keep alive what is best.