I hate my carpet. I am a bit of a cleaning freak (I like to clean – it’s restful for me to get things organized). Our living room, dining room & Elam’s rooms are covered in white carpet. Let me try that again: it used to be covered with white carpet. Now it’s grey-white with paint, food, dirt and I am sorry to say, poop stains. The poop is in Elam’s room. I just can’t get it out.
I read Don Everts “Go and Do Likewise” last weekend when I couldn’t sleep. (Actually there was some thump in the night and I couldn’t go to sleep for fear of someone coming into my room to knock me over the head. Dumb…)
Anyhow, he wrote about the fact that Jesus called his audience “salt.” Back then, salt preserved. It kept things from rotting. Everts says that although we cannot stop the overall deterioration of the world, we can slow it down. In fact, he encourages us to go and do something so that it will rot more slowly while we are alive.
I used to ask God, why do I get such a blessed life? Financially we are pretty well off. Brian and I both have college degrees and I managed to even finish my Masters this summer. Our kids are healthy. We (mostly) have job security.
Genesis 12 tells us why: it is to bless others. Not to keep it. Not to get applause. Not to save more. Not to get new floors even though our carpets are downright disgusting. All that will not last. And I think it can actually only add to the rotting of our culture (our old nasty white carpet won’t just disappear, right?).
For the Askers, it means, for now, forgoing a new floor and maybe new kitchen cabinets and all the other home improvement projects we’d love to do. Instead, we are saving as much as we can to pay for the fees to get one little Chinese boy or girl to Duluth, MN. We hope to bless him/her and our other home made kids so much so that they can bless the world.
We are salt. The world should be different because we follow Jesus.