How Salty Are You?

My life has been consumed by thoughts about salt the past few days.  My husband had to see the Dr. on Monday morning because his blood pressure sky-rocketed...he was shaky, his heart was racing, and he got light-headed every time he stood up.  After a trip to Urgent Care, a valium and some blood pressure medicine he was sent home with orders to see a physician...which he did yesterday.  Now we're challenged with making some dietary changes and in a month we'll see if the numbers go down.  Yes, it's hereditary, but the main cuplrit here is salt!

I don't know if you've ever looked at the foods you eat, but you might be as suprised as we were to find out just how much salt/sodium there is in everything!!  It's even in things that don't taste salty like cereal.  We rely on so many pre-packaged foods, and the manufacturers rely on salt to preserve it's shelf life.  Did you realize that it will take 6 weeks of limiting your salt intake for your taste buds to adjust to it's liking of other seasonings?  We've been trained to want way more than our body needs.

Salt is very useful to prevent food from spoiling...and it adds flavor.  But, like all earthly pleasures, it needs to be kept in check.  In our spiritual walk, we need to keep our "saltiness" in check too.  It's all too easy to walk around like Mrs. Dash and pretend to be salt, but it's just not the real thing. 

Being the kind of salt that Jesus talks about (the kind that brings flavor to life) requires the same kind of concentrated effort it takes to carefully plan how much sodium we consume in our diets.  When we choose to blend in instead of stand up for Christ we lose our saltiness and become worthless.  "Salt is good, but if it loses it's saltiness, how can it be made salty again?"  So go and be salt in the world (but just watch how much you eat)!  :-)