Shake, shake, shake

photo courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

My Bible reading has found me in Colossians this week and has left me churning some of my favorite verses:

Be wise in the way you act toward outsiders; make the most of every opportunity. Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.  Colossians 4:5-6 (NIV)

I have really been examining my speech to be sure I am, as the Message translation of these verses says:

 Be gracious in your speech. The goal is to bring out the best in others in a conversation, not put them down, not cut them out.

One of my man's favorite preachers/teachers is Ravi Zacharias.  (**Jim's other favorite Preacher/teachers are Jim Cymbala and Francis Chan.  You can imagine his excitement when we received this information from Brooklyn Tabernacle yesterday about their upcoming conference.  Dude, it was like Christmas day all over again around here!**)

A few years ago, Jim shared this story with me that he had heard Ravi share.  It is one of my all time favorites and I have been thinking about it this week along with my Colossians verses:   

There was once a glass saltshaker. And in this saltshaker lived –you guessed it!- thousands and thousands of grains of salt.

Life was great for the salt inside this saltshaker: all the grains of salt were surrounded by other grains of salt, and they all lived happily in the saltshaker – protected from the unknown of the outside.

One day, two of these grains of salt struck up a conversation with each other (as grains of salt tend to do).

One salt said to the other: “Boy, isn’t life GRAND?! We’re here, in this saltshaker on this kitchen table, without a care in the world! Everyone in here looks, thinks and acts just like us! This is SO GREAT!”

To this, the other grain of salt replied: “What are you happy about? Don’t you realize that, every once in a while, a giant hand comes out of the sky, lifts up this saltshaker, and SHAKES it into a giant bowl of soup? Every time that happens, some of us fall out and are never seen again! Who knows what happens to them? They are shaken into that soup and we have NO IDEA where they go from there!”

At this point, a wise old grain of salt came up and interrupted them. “Guys,” he said, “don’t worry about it. That giant hand may one day shake us into a giant bowl of soup, but one thing is certain: that soup will never taste the same again.”

I want to be "salty".  I want to make people thirsty for Jesus.  My prayer is that when I leave a conversation that I can point the person to Jesus in such a way of Truth and encouragement that they will never be the same again.  It is a tall order, however, with the help of The Holy Spirit we can be obedient and "salty".  Do you want to be "salty" too?  Let's be ready.  Never know when it will be time for that "shake, shake, shake!"