“You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet.” Matthew 5:13
I have no idea where the following story comes from in order to give credit to where it’s due.
There was once a salt shaker sitting on a kitchen table, with all sorts of grains of salt resting in it, one of which looked out of its container always with a sense of awe and wonder at various things it saw around itself.
“Look at the beautiful view of the stain glass window by the table upon which this saltshaker sits! Look at the view outside the window — the colours of the sky and the trees and other buildings out there! We are so blessed to be able to behold such a thing. Look at the colours all around the room! This saltshaker — what a lovely design, it is fantastic!”
And so this particular grain of salt was always full of joy, constantly focusing on all the lovely scenery in his life, viewing only the positive aspects of everything all around him.
However, there was one grain of salt, who did not share his outlook, and in fact was the complete opposite. He proceeded to correct him.
“What is wrong with you?
Don’t you realize, that every so often, someone comes and takes this salt shaker, and pours it over a hot steaming bowl of soup, and many of our friends and colleagues are plunged into their death, never to be seen again?
And if that’s not bad enough, someone devours that bowl of soup and swallows it all? How can you sit here and enjoy all the beauty all around us, when all of us face an impending boiling hot doom — never knowing if the next time a hand comes and grabs us all by the shaker, that one of us might be among the next to die?”
And so this more pessimistic grain of salt attempted to enlighten him to things his companion had not previously taken into consideration. Nevertheless, he didn’t daunt the first piece of salt from his outlook.
Still a third grain of salt was listening to all of this and stepped in and brought forth his perspective.
“Brothers, brothers! Let’s stop this arguing. There is validity to both of your words. Yes, there is beauty all around us. And yes it’s also true that life is short and we never know when it will end and when the hand will come and shake us from this container and plunge us each to our own demise to be eaten alive.
However, you are both forgetting one thing, and that is the fact that when we take that plunge, that soup will never taste the same as it would have if we had not poured out into it.”
Friend, this world will “never be the same” for someone if you were never in it. Are you making the best of your time it?
What taste is your life going to leave behind for others?
