Salt

    Today I’m grateful for salt. Literal salt, that we use to preserve food, and to enhance flavor. We used a great deal of salt this week trying to salt cure olives. It’s our first year growing olives and my first attempt at curing them. I know some people use lye, but I am nervous about that, so we decided to try salt. It has to sit for 3 weeks, and I have to stir it every day. I’ll let you know in December how they turned out. 

But I’m also grateful for the salt of the earth that is, the Christians in the Kingdom of Heaven. Like my mother before me, I can’t usually get through church without my mascara streaming down my face, and my children looking at me warily and wondering if everything is okay because mother is crying. Again.

Today I was crying for joy. Sometimes when I worship, I feel as if I can barely just glimpse the Church of Jesus Christ- spread across time and space- in the Kern River Valley, in Kern County, in California, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, the Philippines, Cambodia, the Marshall Islands. You name it, there’s most likely a gospel-preaching church there.

                Scrappy little churches- Praying, Baptizing, singing, studying the Bible, trying to share the gospel with their community, and trying to ensure that their own children in particular get to know Jesus Christ.

                I weep for joy when I think of the scrappy little churches. Maybe I’m more conscious of it than most Christians- I have been privileged to visit churches with my father when growing up as the missionary’s daughter in Kern County. The churches are full of people- fragile, flawed, feeble, weak and imperfect. And yet…impossible to completely destroy.

                Even churches have a life cycle and they do die sometimes. It’s very painful, like when a person dies. But often out of the ashes of an older church, a new church will be born. And those members who were truly seeking Christ will often bless a different church with their presence and their service.

                I am honored and blessed to know so many women and men across the world who seek to honor our Master, Jesus Christ.

I wish I could join all their churches and serve with them!

I love their tenacity- and it fills me with such hope in the Kingdom of Heaven. These churches are the Salt of the Earth.

We think the political scenes of our country are “what’s really going on,” but these little, Christ-focused churches- they are the real news. Their salt helps heal souls, lives, bodies, and families. Hope is born, communities are ministered to, and the Bride of Christ is ultimately unstoppable.

Every place in the world that I have ever visited, I have found a Christ-focused church to attend. From Istanbul to Oxford, from Mexico to Alaska, from Kern County to Kernville. All these churches are so different, and yet every single one feels like coming home, and I have always been made welcome. If you need prayer, they'll pray for you. If you need food, they'll feed you. And if you need a hug, they'll hug you (or a social distancing elbow bump.) 

                Thank God for churches.