Today’s reading: Romans 8:1-11; Colossians 4:6

Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer each person.

Colossians 4:6

I’m sure my doctor would tell me I have too much salt in my diet.  It’s one of many factors that have contributed to my seemingly ever-expanding waistline.  In our culture of plenty, where heart failure is the most common cause of death, salt is often viewed as something negative – even something to be avoided. We even label people who are difficult to talk to or get along with as having a “salty personality.”

But Scripture speaks differently.  Salt was flavor. Salt was preservation. Salt was valuable. Overall, salt meant life and health and wealth and goodness.  As St. Paul concludes his letter of encouragement to the church at Colossae, he exhorts them that their speech, their conversations with one another, be filled with salt – and he does not mean for them to be unpleasant or easily irritated!  He means for conversations to be filled with grace, filled with God’s goodness – His salt.

How should this happen?  For them and for us, our conversations are filled with God’s grace and goodness by being in prayer and in God’s Word.  If I am disconnected from His Word, my words become more and more salty by the world’s definition, and less and less salty by God’s definition.  Instead, we are called to hear God’s Word, listen and obey, and return to Him in prayer and praise.

So why not start now? If you have not yet read Romans 8:1-11 today, then do that now.  Wait, I mean it. Go and read it.

Ok. Now that you have been filled with God’s salt, go and sprinkle some on your conversations with others today.

Prayer:

Lord, fill me with your grace in my conversations, that your grace may enhance and enrich my relationships and be an encouragement to those around me

Contributed by Rev. Jarod Koenig