Salt

Salt

You are the salt of the earth. But what good is salt if it has lost its flavor? Can you make it salty again? It will be thrown out and trampled underfoot as worthless.

KAREN, our elementary school’s music teacher, loves every child, knows every family, and is the best example of a “salty” woman (the biblical kind) I know.

When schools unexpectedly shut down for the last part of the school year, my community responded with generosity, setting up locations to pick up prepackaged meals for children who would normally eat a free breakfast and lunch at school. Karen, aware that many families in her school had difficulty getting to the collection sites, jumped into her car for several hours each afternoon to run a lunch route, dropping off more than one hundred meals at doors with a kind word and a wave, working late into the evenings to make up for the time lost during the midday.

Parents of her students confessed heartbreaking circumstances as they tearily thanked her for going out of her way to show care and compassion, for seeing them, for making sure they had healthy food.

While this is a beautiful story of going above and beyond in a time of crisis, those of us who know Karen were not the least bit surprised. Crisis or not, she remains the same. She nurtures our children with a loving, firm hand in her class and alongside her on her piano bench in ways that go beyond mere music lessons. We’ve been part of the troops she has rallied again and again when a need was too big for one person to meet, dropping bags of groceries, school supplies, and winter gear in her entryway.

Karen is salt, and she invites us to be salty with her. She meets needs without shaming, and she leads by example, mentoring the rest of us in how it’s done with compassion and dignity. She is the best example I know of a woman who is the hands and feet of Jesus.

Lord, help us to see and respond to needs around us with compassion and dignity. May we be salty. Amen.

-Julie

One Good Step: Make it a habit to quietly meet a need each week.